


Heartless

by HMSLusitania



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Enchanted Forest only, Multi, No Curse AU, Storybrooke doesn't exist
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-03-19
Updated: 2015-05-20
Packaged: 2018-03-18 16:42:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 30,314
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3576540
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HMSLusitania/pseuds/HMSLusitania
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Regina never cast the curse. But fate has a funny way of making sure things turn out how they should, regardless of circumstance. </p><p>(updates Wednesdays)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

"Your curse didn't work, Imp," Regina snapped, waving her hand at Rumpelstiltskin. It was meant to blast him backwards into the rocks that made up the wall of his prison. Instead, the bastard just giggled and deflected her magic.

"And you used the heart of the thing you love most?" he asked, a twinkle in his eyes.

"I used my prize steed," Regina replied, trying to think of another type of magical attack she could use against the Dark One. Coming up with something good was difficult since he'd been the one to train her.

"A horse?" Rumple asked. "You used a horse heart and expected  _that_  was going to cast the dark curse?"

Regina sneered at him.

"It's supposed to be the heart of the thing you love  _most_ , dearie, and that isn't a bloody horse," Rumple said. "Try again!"

He giggled with that grating giggle of his. Regina cursed loudly and vanished into a cloud of smoke, appearing in her bedroom at the castle. Her father was waiting for her there. He rushed over and embraced her.

"Well? Did the Dark One tell you what went wrong?" he asked.

"I didn't use the heart of the thing I love most," Regina said. She felt sick. Snow and that idiot prince of hers were married and happy and about to have a baby and she couldn't even cast a simple curse to break them up.

"You know the only thing I've ever wanted for you was your happiness," her father said, stroking the back of her hair. "And if this curse would make you happy, then you can have-"

"What are you saying?" Regina asked, stepping away from his embrace and frowning at him. Her father was the only person who'd ever truly loved her. And she knew he was the thing she loved most. And now he was offering – no. She couldn't. There was no way she could take her father's heart.

"If this curse is the key to your happiness, then you can have my heart," he offered.

"Daddy-" Regina started.

"No, I'm serious, Regina," he replied. "All I want is for you to be happy. Being queen, running the kingdom, that was your mother's plan for you. I just want what's best for you."

He looked and sounded so sincere that Regina felt her heart break all over again.

"I can't," she said, feeling like she was still the scared little girl Rumple forced to take the heart of a unicorn. "I can't kill you."

She noticed the relief in her father's eyes. "Then we'll find a different way to get your happy ending, my dear."

OOooOOooOOooOO

Looking out across the kingdom revealed only clear blue skies. Grumpy frowned. Given the threats the Evil Queen had been making, the curse should've come that day. But day wore on into evening, then twilight, then night. The fireflies came out, the owls called and swooped over the forest looking for mice. In the trees surrounding the causeway to the castle, the wolves on patrol howled. But the valleys to all sides were clear. There was no curse.

As the night darkened and headed distinctly towards a curse-free dawn, there was a pop and a shower of blue dust and then the blue fairy materialised in front of Leroy. He glowered at her.

"What do you want?" he grumbled.

"Oh it's the most excellent news!" Blue exclaimed. "The Evil Queen had a change of heart. She decided not to cast the curse! We're safe!"

The fairy shrugged her wings back out, and then shrunk down to normal size and flitted away. Grumpy stared after her and kicked Sleepy in the foot.

"Hey, wake up!" he shouted. Sleepy jumped awake and stared at him with tired eyes. "There's no curse! We're safe!"

News of their safety spread across the castle quickly, and when it reached the prince and princess, they opened the cellar and threw an impromptu feast to celebrate. Grumpy couldn't remember the last time ale had tasted quite so good, or food so succulent. But if the Evil Queen wasn't going to stand in the way of their happiness, then maybe there were other matters that could be dealt with.

OOooOOooOOooOO

The Dark One sat alone in his cell, holding the bars, waiting. Something had gone wrong. He should've been in the land without magic by now. Not still stuck in this cell. His visions had been quite clear. He would find his son again, but he knew the only way to do that was to journey to the land without magic, and for that he needed Regina to cast the dark curse that he'd gone through so much trouble to procure. And now there was…nothing.

"Something wrong?" the prince asked, walking up to Rumple's cell with a torch in hand. He was flanked by a few other princes and Rumple wanted nothing more than to introduce all of their faces to a good beating.

"Not at all, Charming," Rumple said, letting go of the bars and stepping back. "I just expected…the curse."

"The word came down," Charming said. "The Evil Queen changed her mind. There's not going to be a curse."

Rumple considered this new information, and grimaced. That certainly wasn't according to the plan.

"Well then," he said, fishing in the crack in the wall for the scroll of parchment.

"What are you doing?" Charming asked, gripping the hilt of his sword.

Wasn't that just  _charming_ , Rumple thought. Thinking he could defeat the Dark One with a common sword.

"If there isn't going to be a curse," Rumple said. "Then there's no reason for me to stay here."

"This cell is inescapable," one of Charming's companions said. His name started with some kind of vowel as far as Rumple knew. Aaron, or Oliver, or Eric or something. It didn't matter, not really.

"That's nice, dearie," Rumple said. He unfurled his scroll and looked at his carefully drawn chain of names. Ah well. There were other squids. He lifted the parchment and blew, scattering the words in a cloud. They wrapped around the bars of the cell and the fanglike protrusions disappeared, allowing Rumple to step out. The three princes drew their swords.

Rumple had no patience for that. With a backhanded wave, the princes flew backwards into the walls. He had things to do.

OOooOOooOOooOO

"She didn't cast the curse," Cora said, frowning and staring at the unclouded land.

"What does that mean?" Hook asked, scanning the area. He didn't trust Cora, but if she was going to get him closer to killing the crocodile then he was going to stick with her.

"It means my daughter needs me," Cora said. She smiled at Hook. "Just…not yet."

Hook rolled his eyes. He'd waited centuries to kill the crocodile. He supposed he could wait a while longer.

"So what's our plan?" Hook asked.

He was unimpressed when Cora disappeared in a swirl of purple smoke, and was even less amazed when she returned moments later.

"I forgot something," she said. She waved her gloved hand at him and a wave of magic cascaded over him. Hook shuddered. "After all that time you spent in Neverland, I have no idea what you'd do if your hair turned grey."

Hook frowned. "What did you do to me?"

"Nothing drastic," Cora said. "I just froze you in time. You're no good to me if you lose your pretty face."

She started to disappear again, but Hook caught her wrist in his hook. "What's the plan?"

"You just wait for me, dear," Cora said. She smiled. "I've got my own curse to cast."


	2. Eighteen Years Later

"And so, with the curse abandoned by the Evil Queen, Snow White and Prince Charming took over the Enchanted Forest. They dealt with the villains King George and the Queen, banishing George far across the seas and confining the Queen to the kingdom she was meant to inherit, far to the south of the main part of the Enchanted Forest. Snow White became the high Queen as she was meant to, and Prince Charming became the King, and everyone lived happily ever after," the storyteller said.

Emma sipped her pint in silence in the corner. With her hood drawn over her face to hide her long, bright, easily identified blonde hair, there was no way anyone would recognise her. Besides, all of her parents' friends and allies were back at the castle on the lake, and it wasn't like she'd been introduced to the public yet. No one was going to find her. Or, well, no one was going to recognise her. It was just bad luck and an unhappy coincidence that the storyteller was talking about how her parents came to rule the Enchanted Forest. It wasn't that she didn't know the story. She knew the story, she'd heard the story a thousand and three times, it was just…exhausting.

Her mother, the daughter of queens and kings for generations, had only ever wanted her kingdom back and now she had it, had had it for almost twenty years. And Emma wasn't even eighteen yet, so she couldn't go exploring the kingdom, couldn't have the adventures her parents had talked about. She hadn't even had her public introduction ball yet. And she was tired of it. So tired that she'd run away.

"Another pint of ale, miss?" the barkeep asked, approaching Emma's table.

"Oh, no, thank you," Emma said, handing the man what she hoped was the appropriate amount of silver. "I should be moving on."

The barkeep shrugged and Emma pulled her hood closer around her face before slipping out the door of the tavern. She could only hope she'd get away unnoticed. Then she could make it to the sea, sail across the oceans to a different kingdom, and have the sorts of adventures her parents had always talked about.

She'd made it three feet out the tavern door when she spotted the first wanted poster. She tore it down and stared at it.

"Are you kidding me?" she demanded. Her own likeness stared at her from the page, no name given, but the information that she was wanted alive for a great reward was listed. She supposed it was to keep unsavoury folk from holding her ransom as a prisoner since she was the princess, but still. Her own parents had put a price on her head.

She folded the page up and tucked it into her dress, one she'd stolen from her maid, and set off towards the forest. She'd barely made it a few more yards before she saw palace guards. She swore and kept her head down, looking desperately for somewhere to escape, and accidentally made eye contact with a man sitting on a hay cart. He eyed her for a second, and then without saying anything, he offered her his hand.

He pulled Emma up beside him as the guards got closer. Her fear at discovery must have shown on her face, because he grinned.

"Take the reins," he said.

"What?" she asked.

"Just take the reins," he insisted, thrusting them into Emma's hands. Emma took them and snapped them once or twice, but the old yellow horse hitched to the wagon did nothing but nicker at her indignantly.

"Are you serious?" she demanded. None of the palace horses behaved like that, ever.

"Hey, it's a living creature," the man said in a carrying voice. "You've got to reason with it."

"It won't budge!" Emma insisted. The guards were practically on top of them now.

"Treat it with respect," the man suggested. "Right guys? You know what I'm talking about?"

"Are you talking about horses?" one of the guards asked. With relief, Emma noted it wasn't one of the guards she knew.

"The wife here's got a terrible touch with animals," the man said, taking the reins back from Emma. "Have a great day, fellas."

He snapped the reins and the horse nickered and started to trot. The jolt of the cart moving almost sent Emma toppling back into the hay, but the man put his hand at her back before she could. The motion knocked her hood off, however, and her golden hair spilled out into the moonlight.

"Hey, wait a second-" the guard started.

"Go!" Emma shouted, snapping the reins again. The man nodded in agreement and the horse made a run for it. Before the guards could get organised, they were around the bend in the road and headed into the darker parts of the forest.

"So what are you in for?" the man asked while Emma glanced behind them to see if the guards were still following. They weren't. She sighed in relief.

"There's a price on my head," she said. "You?"

"People get snotty with you if you know how to spin straw into gold and refuse to do it for them," the man replied. Emma stared at him. He had kind eyes, brown with crinkles around the edges from smiling or something like it.

"You know how to do magic?" Emma asked.

"Sort of," he replied. "You got a name?"

"Em-Mary," Emma said.

"Emory?" he said. Emma nodded, figuring that was better than anything else. "I'm Neal."

"Nice to meet you, Neal," Emma replied.

OOooOOooOOooOO

"I just don't think putting up wanted posters was necessarily the right choice," David said, following Snow into the grand hall.

"She ran away, Charming, and that makes her a fugitive," Snow replied. "What do you want me to do? Let her run? At least this way people are looking for her."

"She's going to come back," David said, gripping his wife's arms. "Just…have a little faith."

"Our daughter ran away!" Snow exclaimed. "And you want me to take it on faith that she's going to be fine?"

"You survived in the woods for years," David pointed out. "You were fine."

"My step-mother was trying to kill me!" Snow insisted. She pressed her hands over her mouth. "What if Regina got to her? What if she's in trouble? What if this is how Regina's going to take away our happy endings? By killing our daughter-"

"Snow," David said. "Emma's safe. No one's heard from Regina for years. And even if Emma wants to run all the way to Arendelle, she's still going to be away from Regina."

"I know, but-" Snow replied.

"She's going to be fine," David promised. "And if she's not back in two days, I'll go looking for her myself."

"You'd better keep that promise," Snow replied.

OOooOOooOOooOO

"This barn seems like as good a place as any," Neal said, ushering Emma into the hayloft they'd found. The pouring rain was a deterrent to both them and the crotchety old horse, which Neal unhitched from the cart and led inside as soon as Emma was in the dry barn. They'd been running together for about a week, always headed towards the sea. Then the rain started and it became clear they really needed shelter.

"So what are you running from?" Emma asked, hanging up her soaked cloak to dry. The horse nickered and ambled over to the hay in the barn, munching on it like it owned the stuff. Emma couldn't exactly fault the old creature. She was pretty hungry too.

"Me?" Neal asked. "You know, the usual. My past."

"Obviously," Emma said. "But what in it?"

Neal shrugged. "A few things. What about you? What'd you do to get a price on your head?"

"I ran away," Emma said. "My parents are very possessive."

"I know how that goes," Neal said. "My dad never let go of me, never let me do anything, at least until he changed his mind and abandoned me."

"I'm sorry," Emma said. Neal shrugged again as if to say there was nothing that could be done about it.

Emma liked Neal. She'd discovered over the past few days that he'd spent a fair bit of time on a ship when he was younger, and he was more than willing to help her find a worthy captain to take her across the sea. She appreciated his help, and did her best to tell him that without revealing that she'd never been in the real world before.

"So is it your dad that you're running from?" she asked, fishing out a loaf of bread from her satchel.

"Sort of," Neal said. "I kind of fell into a bad situation a while back and I owe someone a bit of money-"

"And you won't spin straw into gold even to get out of debt?" Emma asked. If anyone in their castle could spin straw to gold, Emma was pretty sure the royal accountants would spend the rest of their lives giggling stupidly to themselves, but the only people she knew of who were able to do so were the Dark One, the Evil Queen, the Evil Queen's deceased mother, and now Neal.

"I hate magic," Neal said. "Wouldn't even use it to save my own life. Obviously, since there are people out for my head and I'm not using it to pay them back."

"At that point, it kind of sounds like it's just the best option," Emma pointed out.

"It's a matter of principle," Neal said. "I can't be mad at my dad and hate him if I'm just like him."

Emma nodded in agreement and handed Neal half the bread. Then his words sunk in. When her mother was a little older than she was, she'd been on the run from her parents – well, her evil stepmother – and she'd been dogged by wanted posters. She'd also spent an extraordinary amount of time in the woods with strange men, just like Emma was doing. They might've had different reasons and circumstances, but Emma was reacting just like Snow.

"Did I say something?" Neal asked.

"N-no," Emma replied. "How close are we to the sea?"

"We should make it to the port tomorrow night," Neal said. "Why? Second thoughts?"

"No," Emma said, bristling and tossing her hair. "Of course not."

Neal pretended he believed her and offered her his flask. Emma took it gratefully and let the liquid burn her throat. She didn't even turn red or cough, which seemed to impress Neal. She'd have to thank Grumpy someday for teaching her how to hold her liquor.

"Easy there," Neal said, taking the flask back and drinking quickly.

"Have you travelled a lot?" Emma asked, reclining against the hay. She'd spent enough of her childhood hiding in the stables to be used to sleeping in similar situations.

"I've moved around a lot," Neal replied. "I've had to."

"What's the most interesting place you've been?" Emma asked.

"I don't know if the  _place_ was interesting at all, but I went to the Evil Queen's kingdom a few years ago," Neal said. "Everyone's…frozen."

"What do you mean they're frozen?" Emma asked. She'd heard all the stories of the Evil Queen, but she didn't know anyone who'd actually been to her kingdom.

"I mean they're all under some kind of sleeping curse," Neal said. "Everyone in the kingdom. I actually came here from there, because it's really easy to get into the ports since everyone's asleep, and they're not even aging. There was this little kid there the first time I went through, and he hadn't aged a single day in years."

Emma stared. She was pretty sure her parents didn't know that. Even if the people there were the Evil Queen's subjects, Emma was sure they would've wanted to do something to free them if they could.

"The entire kingdom's just under a sleeping curse?" Emma asked. "But how are they going to wake up without true love's kiss?"

"There are other ways to break curses than by being Snow White and Prince Charming," Neal said. Emma shivered at the casual mention of her parents and took the flask back from Neal.

She bothered him about the other lands he'd visited and was glad he was good at describing things. He knew most about the maritime kingdoms, and to her surprise he was well versed in the Ogre Wars, all of them, spanning several centuries. He kept talking well into the night, apparently unaware of Emma shifting closer to him, at least until she kissed him on the cheek.

"What was that for?" he asked, giving her a funny smile and turning to look at her.

"For talking to me," Emma said. "Back where I'm from, most people don't do that. At least not honestly."

"Well whatever ivory tower your parents kept you in, sounds like it was a good thing you got out," Neal said, glancing from her eyes down to her lips and back a few times. Emma suppressed the butterflies in her stomach and closed the distance between them.

OOooOOooOOooOO

Snow paced the length of her bedchamber. Emma had been gone a week. David had been gone four days. She'd been kept busy by trade agreements with Abigail and Frederick's kingdom, Thomas and Ella's kingdom, Ariel and Eric's kingdom, and Philip and Aurora's kingdom. But trade agreements were incredibly dull, especially when she wanted to be with her husband looking for their daughter. But someone had to hold down the fort, and she had a better head for foreign policy than David did.

"Any word from them?" Red asked, dropping into one of the chairs at the round table. Snow shook her head and paced past one of her oldest friends. Red sniffed curiously, but didn't say anything, although her eyes widened.

"What is it?" Snow asked.

"Probably nothing," Red said.

"What was probably nothing?" Snow demanded. She didn't mean to be cross with Red, she was just short tempered the past few days.

"Whatever it is, it's very early," Red said, looking evasive.

"What's very early?" Snow asked. Red looked away. "Red."

"I – there's a chance that you're kind of…pregnant," Red said, smiling at Snow like she was bracing for impact. "But very early. A couple weeks at most."

"You can smell that?" Snow asked, resting her hand on her abdomen. She was almost forty. She wasn't supposed to be having more children. She couldn't even keep a handle on one.

"Wolf's senses," Red replied. "But it's still very, very early and any number of things can go wrong-"

"They won't," Snow said, knowing in her heart it was true. True love was a force to be reckoned with.

"Are you okay?" Red asked.

"Well, I'm pregnant, but I can't even convince my first child that it's a good idea to stay in the castle," Snow said. "My husband's out looking for her, and I have this terrible feeling that Regina's got something to do with Emma's disappearance."

"I can go find them if it would make you feel better," Red offered. "David's easy enough to track down."

"I'll give them a few more days," Snow said, squeezing Red's hand. After all, she had to hope everything would work out the way it was supposed to.

OOooOOooOOooOO

"As promised, my lady, the sea," Neal said, making a sweeping gesture towards the port. Emma grinned and leaned against him. He wrapped his arm around her shoulders and kissed the side of her head.

Large ships bobbed in the gentle waves of the port, the docks lit up in the darkness of the night. Loud laughter came from an inn just opposite the harbour.

"Want to go get us a room while I stable the horse?" Neal suggested, pulling the cart to a stop. Emma agreed, kissed him quickly, and ducked into the inn. Tables full of seafarers gambled and drank and made a raucous amount of noise. They reminded Emma of the dwarves on a feast night. She wondered how angry Grumpy would be if he knew she was in a place like this by herself – aside from the companionship of a relative stranger – and the thought made her sad. But she pushed it aside and fought her way to the bar. She ordered a room and dinner and made her way to a table, feeling eyes on her the entire time. She looked around, but didn't see anyone staring at her. She shrugged off the weird feeling and sat down, waiting for Neal.

A few minutes later, the barmaid brought over her dinner and a pint. Emma looked up to thank her, and when she returned her attention to the table, someone was sitting across from her. The first thing she noticed about the man was that everything he was wearing was black leather except his waistcoat, which was embroidered red. After that, it was the intense blue of his eyes.

"Can I help you?" she asked, wrapping her cloak tighter around herself even though it was quite warm in the pub.

"I certainly hope so, love," he replied, grinning at her. "What's a lass like you doing at a place like this?"

"I'm not here alone," Emma said.

"I never suggested you were," the man replied, his eyes trailing inappropriately across her body. Emma could feel the fading impressions of Neal's hands following the same paths the night before and suppressed a shiver. "People don't come here unless they're looking for a ship."

"So what if I am?" Emma asked.

"I just so happen to have one," he said. His smile was ridiculously bright, and slightly feral. "Fastest ship in the realm."

"You have the fastest ship in the realm?" Emma asked, disbelief readily apparent in her voice.

"Aye, the Jolly Roger," he replied.

Emma stared at him for a moment. "How stupid do you think I am?"

"Sorry?" he asked, taken aback by her question.

"You have the Jolly Roger, the fastest ship in the realm, captained by the infamous Captain Hook, who sails the high seas trying to kill the Dark One?" Emma asked.

"Aye," the pirate replied, looking confused by her question.

"You can't sail a ship that's been missing for two hundred years," Emma informed him.

"Have a little faith, love," he replied, holding up his left hand. Instead of fingers, he had a hook. "Although I am flattered you've heard of me."

Emma stared. Captain Hook was a legend, a ghost story. He wasn't real, or if he was, he'd been dead for a good long while.

"But you can't be Captain Hook," Emma said.

"I'll decide what I can and can't be," he replied, grinning at her with a highly suggestive look in his eye. "And I thought you said you weren't here alone."

"I'm not," Emma said, noticing for the first time Neal wasn't back from the stables yet.

"I wonder if whoever you're travelling with found this," Hook said, pulling a paper from his coat and smoothing it across the table. It was the wanted poster with Emma's face on it.

Her blood ran cold. "Where did you get that?"

"They're everywhere, darling," Hook replied. "Not that I particularly care what you did, but that reward is…quite a lot of money. Whoever wants you back must be missing you terribly."

"And they don't have any patience for pirates," Emma replied, standing up and looking for an exit. There was the inconvenient problem that Hook was between her and the door.

"Don't run, that just makes this harder," Hook said, rolling his eyes like he'd done this dance a hundred times before. For all Emma knew, he might have.

Before she could make a break for it, the door burst open and a pirate in a red knit hat ran in, forcing Neal in front of him with a knife pressed to his throat.

"Neal!" Emma exclaimed, running towards him. Hook grabbed her and wrapped his arm securely against her stomach, pulling her flush against him, his hook digging into the side of her neck.

"Captain, look who I found in the stables!" the pirate in the red hat said.

"Don't you touch a hair on her head!" Neal shouted, trying to throw the red-hatted pirate off. The man just pressed the knife harder to his neck and Emma saw a drop of blood appear.

"Now Baelfire," Hook said. He removed his hook from her neck but didn't let go of her. The cold metal traced across Emma's shoulder and lifted a lock of her hair. "Why would I touch her hair? I'm not particularly fond of blondes."

"It's going to be okay, Emory," Neal promised, trying to pull the red-hatted pirate's knife away from his throat. The rest of the people in the pub had crowded around to watch the exchange.

"Why did he call you Baelfire? Do you know these guys?" Emma asked, shuddering as the hook slowly trailed through her hair.

"We've met once or twice," Neal said, struggling against the stranglehold he was in.

Emma didn't get a chance to respond before the door burst open yet again and a tall blond man stormed in, brandishing a sword. Emma had never been happier to see her father.

"Unhand my daughter!" he commanded, pointing the sword at Hook.

"Unhand her?" Hook asked. "But your majesty, I've successfully apprehended her and stopped her from running off. I believe I'm entitled to a reward."

"Consider your reward your life, pirate," David said.

"Your majesty?" Neal asked, looking between Emma and David. His eyes went wide. "You're the princess?"

"Kind of," Emma admitted. A gasp went up from the patrons of the pub.

"Now your majesty, be reasonable," Hook said. "God knows what this villain would've done to your daughter if I'd let them run off together."

He gestured to Neal with his hook.

"He's not a villain," Emma insisted, struggling to break Hook's hold on her. He didn't let go.

"Well, he is the Dark One's son, so I don't know how much more evidence you need, love," Hook replied.

Emma gaped across the room at Neal, who was turning red. "You're the Dark One's son?"

"Kind of," he admitted.

"What is going on here?" David demanded.

"I'll make you a deal, your majesty," Hook said. "I'll return your daughter, duly unscathed, and you let me keep that one over there."

"Let you keep the Dark One's son?" David asked. "What do you want with him?"

"Dad, you can't be serious-" Emma interrupted, struggling against Hook's arm. David silenced her with a look.

"I have a personal affair to settle with the lad," Hook replied. "Long business, you understand."

David looked like he was seriously considering it, and that made Emma mad. She twisted in Hook's grasp and shoved against his chest. A resounding boom that shook the very foundations of the inn sounded from the contact and Hook went sprawling backwards. A jolt of white magic spread from her hands and knocked every pirate in the room to the ground. The only people left standing were David and Neal.

"Emma, what was that?" David asked, lowering his sword and staring at his daughter. Emma glanced at Hook, sprawled against a table with a distinctly dishevelled look about him. His eyes were alight with unbridled curiosity.

Neal, on the other hand, was staring at her like she'd sprouted a second head.

"You can do magic?" he asked, his voice low like she'd betrayed him.

"I don't-" Emma started, staring at her hands. There was no other explanation for what she'd just done.

Neal backed away from her towards the door.

"Neal-" Emma said.

"Stay away from me," he said, before he turned and ran.

Emma felt her chin tremble and her eyes start to burn. She heard the familiar sound of a sword sliding into a sheath and then her father's large, comforting hand was on her shoulder.

"Are you ready to come home?" he asked in his most kind voice. Emma sniffed, which he took as assent, and he steered her out of the inn. He paused in the doorway and untied a coin pouch from his belt. He tossed it to the inn's patron.

"For your discretion," he said. The man nodded solemnly, and David coaxed Emma out of the inn. There was no trace of Neal on the street or any of the ships. The only sign he'd been there at all was the old yellow horse standing next to the stables. The pirates must have grabbed him before he could fully get her in one of the stalls.

"You can ride my horse," David offered. "I'll walk."

"It's okay," Emma said, wondering how he could possibly trust her to go along with him back to the castle if he was on foot and she was on the horse. Her father had the most splendid horse in the Enchanted Forest. Everyone said so. That horse stood patiently next to the inn, not a hair out of place. Emma glanced over at the old yellow nag and slowly unhitched her from the hay cart.

"Are you stealing a horse, young lady?" David asked, tossing her a blanket from one of his saddlebags.

"She was Neal's," Emma replied, spreading the blanket across the mare's back and swinging herself up. The stubborn old girl nickered but didn't do anything untoward.

"Ah," David said. "Come on then."

The journey back to the castle passed with little to no conversation. Emma was fine with the silence. She imagined David could see the dejection in her eyes and understood that she didn't want to talk about it.

They reached the palace in a few days and Emma was immediately grabbed by a series of people, starting with her mother.

"Oh, Emma, we were so worried," Snow gushed, holding her tightly.

"I'm fine," Emma mumbled, her voice muffled by her mother's shoulder.

"What happened?" Snow asked.

"There were pirates involved," David said, putting a strong hand on Emma's shoulder and freeing her from her mother's grasp. "It was very exciting and it's been a long journey."

"Pirates?" Snow asked, her eyes wide. "Are you sure you're okay?"

"She can do magic," David replied, and a wave of shock went through those assembled.

"You can do magic? But we'll have to find you a proper teacher, not Rumpelstiltskin like Regina had and-" Snow started.

"I don't want to learn," Emma interrupted. She felt like crying. It was nice to be home, even if she was mad about it, but mostly she could see the betrayal and disgust in Neal's eyes when they all found out she could do magic. She wanted nothing to do with that.

"Emma-" Snow tried.

Emma ignored her and ran for her room. Once there, she barricaded her door and crawled into her bed, pulling her blankets over her head.

They left her alone for the better part of a week. No one tried to coax her out of her room, and instead they just left food outside the door for her. The only person Emma saw was Red, who stopped by to invite her on a hunting trip if she still wanted to get out of the castle. Emma declined and went back to sleeping.

It was a few days later that David let himself in and sat on the edge of her bed.

"I tried to run away once," he said.

"Yeah, sure," Emma scoffed, refusing to look at her father.

"You know that King George isn't really my father, right?" he asked. Emma stared. "Someone cursed the queen so they could never have children and he made a deal with the Dark One to get a son, my twin brother James. Anyway, James died in the middle of negotiations with Midas's kingdom, and so King George found me and made me pretend to be a prince. But then he tried to make me marry Abigail, and I tried to run away. Because I wanted to marry for love."

Emma huffed. He'd certainly managed to do that. Her parents were more in love than anyone she knew.

"And if that Neal character, the Dark One's son, was really the person you're supposed to be with, then you'll find each other again," David promised. "Just, maybe skip the pirates next time."

Emma sniffed, but sat up to hug him.

"Now, I think your mother's got some big plans to start working on your presentation ball for next month," David said, squeezing her. "I'm sure she'd welcome your input."

OOooOOooOOooOO

The ball went down without a flaw. The public invited to the ball all oohed and awed appropriately at Emma when she was presented to the kingdom as a fully realised princess. She even found it in herself to smile and dance with her father. Everything went wrong again the next morning when Red informed her she was pregnant.

"I'm what?" Emma demanded.

"Your scent changes when you're pregnant, and, sorry honey, but…" Red said. Emma was glad her parents were not part of the conversation.

"What am I supposed to do?" Emma asked. It wasn't like she could track Neal down and tell him he was going to be a father. After the relationship he had with his father, at least as he'd summarised it, she couldn't imagine he'd be thrilled with that information. Especially since she could do magic, even if she was ignoring that part of her reality.

"Well, the first step is to tell your parents," Red said. Red may have been Emma's favourite surrogate aunt, but at that moment, Emma didn't really care for her very much.

"I can't tell my parents," Emma said, gaping at Red in horror.

Red sighed. "Well, it's not like you can run away again. It's the moon time in a day or so and I'd be able to track you within minutes."

Emma wanted to protest that it wasn't going to be the moon time forever and she could run away sometime between that month's and the next, but Red was right. She couldn't run away again.

To her surprise, her parents listened calmly. David's hand tightened on the hilt of his sword until Emma explained that no one had taken advantage of her. But they didn't say anything. They listened, and they looked calm, but they stayed completely silent until the lack of sound started to echo.

"Say something," Emma requested.

"Twins run in your father's family," Snow replied, with about as much diplomacy as she could muster given the circumstances.

"I'm sorry?" Emma asked.

"You should be, but that's not the point," Snow said. "Twins run in your father's family, and as such, it'll be believable."

"What will be believable?" Emma asked, looking between her parents like her dad was going to jump into the conversation and explain what the hell her mother was saying.

"We can't have a pregnant, unmarried princess, Emma," Snow said.

"What are you saying?" David asked, staring at his wife like she'd suggested murder. "It might be socially problematic, but it's something we can overcome."

"But it's not something we need to overcome," Snow said. "Next month, Emma and I will go to the summer palace and we'll stay there until the babies are born."

"How do you know I'm having twins?" Emma asked.

"I don't," Snow said. "But it turns out I'm pregnant as well."

David and Emma's jaws dropped in perfect unison.

"And so we'll go stay at the summer palace together with a minimum amount of staff, and that'll be the end of it," Snow said.

"Is this something that happens a lot in royal families?" David asked.

"When your family's been ruling a kingdom for several centuries, you have a cover-up for everything," Snow replied. And thus it was decided that they'd leave for the summer palace.

OOooOOooOOooOO

Cora stared at Hook over the tops of her fingers. "I don't understand."

"What don't you understand, love?" Hook asked. "Snow White's daughter can do magic."

"No, I understand that part," Cora replied. "What I don't understand is how you had Snow White's daughter in your grasp, and you let her escape."

"The ransom was handsome, and I haven't heard from you in eighteen years," Hook replied. "Why would I be beholden to doing anything for you at this point?"

"Do you want revenge on Rumpelstiltskin or not?" Cora asked.

"Of course I do," Hook said. "But I thought you wanted to help your daughter. Last I heard, she's still in that enchanted sleep you put her entire kingdom into."

"She is," Cora said. "And of course I want to help my daughter. It's just not the right time yet. But you, you're going to find me that girl."

"You want Snow White's daughter?" Hook asked. He couldn't imagine what Cora wanted with the girl. She was lovely, sure, but he was convinced Cora didn't care what she looked like. Cora didn't care that there'd been fire in her otherwise green eyes like torchlight falling on an emerald when she blasted him backwards. Cora didn't care that the girl was involved with Baelfire, or that Baelfire had disappeared again. Cora didn't care about the hurt in the girl's eyes when Bae realised she could do magic. Hook didn't care either, of course, but Cora hadn't been there to notice.

"Snow White's daughter who can do magic? Why wouldn't I want her?" Cora asked.

"Kidnapping royalty doesn't usually end well, love, trust me," Hook replied. "Are you going to wake your daughter?"

"Not quite yet," Cora said. "I'll wake her when you bring me the girl."

Hook nodded slowly. That gave him ample time to deal with the crocodile before he got himself mixed up in the theft of royal personages.

"Very well," he said. "I suppose I'll see you when I see you."

"Yes I suppose you will," Cora said, standing from their table at the inn. "And Hook? Don't take too long."


	3. Arendelle

They were both boys. Both very small, already green eyed boys, born within a week of each other. Of course, the only people who knew they didn’t share a birthday were Emma, Snow, Doc, David, and Red. Everyone else was kept out of the loop for the sake of the royal reputation.

They were back home from the summer palace now, and Emma had spent the few months between the birth and the present devoting all of her time to fencing lessons. She would do pretty much anything to keep her mind off her baby brother, who was really her son, and that baby’s absent father who didn’t even know he was a father.

“When was the last time you went to the nursery?” David asked, blocking Emma’s swing with an easy arm. He’d told her the story of how he learned to fence – thanks to a young woman named Joan and then a forced encounter with a dragon – and Emma had to admit she preferred being taught to learning through trial and error.

“I don’t know, it’s been a couple days,” Emma said, trying to swing again. Her father was one of the best swordsmen in the realm, so it wasn’t like she was going to beat him. But if she came close, then that would be good. She was certainly never going to beat her mother at archery, but Snow was much quieter on the subject of where she’d learned to shoot than David was about how he’d learned to fight.

“Are you avoiding it?” David asked.

“Why would I be avoiding it?” Emma asked. She was out of breath but trying not to show it. She’d been in pretty good shape when she ran away, but being pregnant had taken it out of her a little. She’d been doing pretty well, since it was almost impossible to tell she’d just given birth a few months before, which was more than she could say for her mother. But no extra weight was going to be enough to dull the glow Snow had every time she held the boys. Emma wished she could say the same.

“I don’t know,” David said. “Because I saw how that boy looked at you when you used magic and Henry’s a reminder?”

Emma stared at him and lowered her sword. She didn’t want to talk about Neal, especially not with her father. She didn’t want to talk about him with her mother either, but Snow wanted to know. Emma hadn’t been very forthcoming, and she’d begged David not to tell her that the Dark One was Henry’s grandfather. As far as she knew, he’d listened.

“I’m sorry,” David said, lowering his sword as well and hugging Emma tightly. “It’ll all work out in the end.”

“You sound like Mom,” Emma accused, letting her father comfort her.

“Your mother’s a very brave, strong, intelligent woman,” David replied. “Sounding like her is hardly the worst thing you could accuse me of.”

Emma snorted.

“Now, the presentation ball is in a few days and I’m sure she’d love your help with the decorations and planning, particularly the art of seating arrangements,” David said. “What do you say?”

“Seating arrangements?” Emma asked, grimacing at him.

“Seating arrangements,” David agreed. “It’ll be fun, I’m sure.”

“Why don’t I believe you?” Emma asked, allowing him to steer her out of the armoury.

“Because you’re just as smart as your mother,” David replied.

Snow did want Emma’s help with the seating arrangements it turned out. Emma grudgingly joined her in the great hall while they shuffled around the different royals and their best possible seating placements.

“It’s an art,” Snow said. “You have to know your guests well enough to be sure you don’t put people who hate each other at the same table, and you have to be able to put them with people they not only get along with, but people they could form solid arrangements with.”

“Seating arrangements are political?” Emma asked, staring at her bleakly while Snow riffled through stacks of name cards.

“Of course they are,” Snow said. “Everything that happens in this castle is political.”

Emma groaned and remembered exactly why she’d decided to run away in the first place.

“Don’t give me that,” Snow said. “Now, where would you put Queen Abigail?”

“Wasn’t the point of the unification of the kingdoms that everyone likes each other?” Emma asked.

“They all like _us_ ,” Snow corrected. “Abigail and Frederick do not get along with Ella and Thomas, which is unfortunate since their daughter Alexandra and Abigail and Frederick’s son are planning to elope.”

Emma nodded. She’d heard all about Alexandra’s plan during her birthday ball almost a full year ago. Alexandra was only a few months younger than she was and had complimented Emma on her bravery when it came to running away. Emma had bowed out of the conversation quickly since she didn’t really want to explain why she’d come back in the first place.

“So do we help Alexandra and William elope or do we keep them far apart?” Snow asked.

“I don’t know,” Emma said. “If we helped them elope then maybe Abigail and Frederick and Ella and Thomas would stop being unhappy with each other.”

Snow smiled. “Very astute, Emma,” she said. “I say we should put all of your friends together at one table, and that way all you young folk can mingle.”

Emma wanted to point out they weren’t really friends, that she didn’t really have friends, and that the first person she knew who actually liked her for her was Neal and he’d abandoned her when he realised what she could do. She didn’t say anything about that to Snow, however, and let her mother continue to lecture on the diplomatic importance of seating.

By the time the naming celebration actually rolled around two days later, Emma was exhausted with it all. She didn’t understand how Snow could go through the whole childbirth-raising two babies-planning a ball-running a kingdom thing all at once. Emma couldn’t get past the planning a ball and childbirth part. But she managed to put on her nice gown and join her parents in the great hall for the feast to celebrate the kingdom’s two new princes.

“Thank you everyone for gathering,” David said once everyone was seated at their exhaustively selected places. “We are honoured to introduce you all to our sons, Prince Leopold and Prince Henry.”

All the assembled burst into applause and the feast commenced in earnest. Emma was perfectly satisfied to just sit in her seat and eat her cake, but at her mother’s insistence, she got up and danced with several of the princes from neighbouring kingdoms.

“You know, Prince Phillip keeps staring at you,” one of the other princesses whispered while she and Emma paused by the refreshments table. Emma was too annoyed with the sheer amount of work that had gone into ordering the beverages on the table to really appreciate them.

“Prince Phillip?” she asked.

“You know? Queen Aurora and King Phillip’s eldest son?” the other princess, Melody, said. “He’s right over there.”

She nodded at the prince in question, who blushed and looked away bashfully. Emma sighed. She just wanted to go to sleep, maybe go to a tavern with Grumpy and Red. That was the problem with being an only child until she was an adult. She got along far better with her parents’ friends than she did with people her own age.

“I think he’s pretty cute,” Melody said.

“Then you should go talk to him,” Emma said.

“Yeah, but he’s looking at you,” Melody replied.

Emma shrugged. “How did the whole…accidentally crossing a seawitch thing turn out for you in the end?”

“Oh that was years ago,” Melody said, although she turned faintly pink and excused herself from the conversation.

“Emma? Where’s Melody going?” Snow asked, appearing from the ether at Emma’s elbow.

“I think to talk to Phillip but I’m not really sure,” Emma said. Snow stared until Emma’s face started to burn. “I kind of asked her about the seawitch thing.”

“Emma,” Snow scolded. “That’s not how a princess behaves--”

“Maybe I don’t want to _be_ a princess,” Emma interrupted. Her voice came out louder and sharper than she intended, and there was a shattering sound as all of the dishes on the refreshments table burst.

The band fell silent and everyone in the ballroom turned and stared. Aside from the wine soaking Emma’s and Snow’s gowns, there was still residual magic crackling on Emma’s fingers. She stared at it for a second, acknowledged that Snow had taken a step backwards, and then ran from the room.

She made it all the way to her room and slammed the door before she started crying. It was the third time she’d used magic. The first had been when she was in the inn by the sea. The second was when she was giving birth to Henry. Every time something got destroyed. At least this time it was just the beverages on the refreshments table, but what about next time? What would it be then? What if she hurt someone all because she could do magic and couldn’t control it? She wasn’t sure she could stand that.

They left her alone for hours. She assumed it was because they were ushering the guests out before they asked too many questions. It was close to midnight when her parents appeared in her room together.

“We’ve been thinking,” Snow started. Emma sniffed and pulled her knees up to her chest. “The fairies can’t teach you to control your magic themselves, but they know people who can.”

“You’re going to send me off with the fairies?” Emma asked. “Send me away?”

“We think it’ll give you a better appreciation of what you have here and how much good you can do as a princess,” David said. “And besides, you’ll get your wish of being out of the house for a little while, and isn’t that nice?”

Emma stared at him and tried not to be sullen. It wasn’t their fault she was a screw up. They definitely hadn’t done anything to her to make her that way, aside from somehow making her capable of magic.

“Fine,” she said. “When am I supposed to leave?”

“Blue said she could take you tomorrow,” Snow said.

Emma nodded and stood up from her bed. She had to start packing.

OOooOOooOOooOO

The Dark One’s castle was an ugly, grim place. Hook hated it the moment he looked at it and hated it more once he was inside. He hadn’t hated it as much then as he did now – now that he was hanging from the ceiling of the dungeon with his hook lying on the floor of the hallway out of reach as the ugly little imp circled him with a knife. All Hook had meant to do was break in, find the dagger, and leave, then get his revenge while he wasn’t in Rumpelstiltskin’s home territory. That plan had gone to shit almost immediately.

“Now, I don’t have the patience or the time to deal with you, pirate, so tell me why you’re here,” Rumple commanded, pricking Hook’s cheekbone with the tip of the knife. He felt the blood start to roll down the side of his face and then he wanted more than ever to tear the Crocodile’s heart out and crush it in front of him the same way he’d done Milah’s.

“And why would I do that?” Hook asked.

“Well it’s that or I skin you alive,” Rumple replied, shrugging. “Which I might do anyway, come to think of it.”

“You don’t have time to deal with the man your wife preferred before you killed her?” Hook demanded.

“You killed her when you took her from me!” Rumple shouted, slicing into Hook’s shoulder with the knife.

“I didn’t take anything! She left you,” Hook replied, trying to kick the crocodile away. Unfortunately, taking his weight off his legs meant he was that much closer to accidentally popping his shoulders out of place.

“She’d never leave me,” Rumple snapped, gouging into Hook’s other shoulder.

Hook snarled at him. This seemed to be enough for Rumple, because he jammed his hand through Hook’s ribcage. The pain was excruciating, worse than the bleeding gouges on his shoulders by a long shot. It was about equivalent to the time he lost his hand.

“Where is it?” Rumple demanded, wrenching his hand out of Hook’s chest with no heart to show for it.

“Elsewhere,” Hook replied. “You’ve already got my hand, what more do you want?”

“Where is your heart?” Rumple shouted.

Hook smirked. “Somewhere else,” he said. “Where’s your son?”

Rumple stopped cursing his lack of easy revenge and glared at Hook. “How do you know _anything_ about my son?”

“You’ve been searching the realm for magic beans,” Hook said. “I’m a pirate. I hear things. Although I don’t know what you’re going to do with a magic bean since that’ll just take you to another realm.”

“Not that it’s any of your business, but my son’s in another realm,” Rumple said. “A land without magic.”

“Is he?” Hook asked. “Funny, I could’ve sworn I saw him with the princess less than a year ago.”

Rumple’s face went slack with shock and Hook was glad he’d at least managed to confuse the bastard.

“Bae’s here?” he asked. “Here in the Enchanted Forest?”

Hook did his best approximation of a shrug.

“And he was with the princess…” Rumple said, pacing away from Hook. “Well, it looks like I’ll just have to find the princess then.”

Hook sighed heavily. He didn’t know exactly what that princess was about, but she seemed to inspire dark forces to desire her for one reason or another. That was just bad luck.

“Good luck getting her before Cora does,” Hook said while Rumple started to leave him alone in the cell.

“Cora?” Rumple asked, turning back to face him. “I thought Cora was banished through the looking glass.”

“Aye, she was, and someone was hired to bring her back,” Hook replied. “And she wants your princess, the one you want to use for bait for your son.”

Rumple stopped trying to leave the cell, apparently because he decided Hook was worth his time now. Hook silently cursed the fact his hook was too far away to use.

“And do you know where she is?” Rumple asked.

“Who?” Hook asked.

“Cora,” Rumple said.

“I imagine she’s in her daughter’s kingdom,” Hook said. “I don’t know. We don’t have much contact.”

“Don’t lie to me, dearie, I know her anti-aging spells anywhere,” Rumple said. He pressed his knife to the base of Hook’s jaw. “Now tell me where Cora is.”

“I just did,” Hook said. “And we don’t have much contact. I haven’t seen her since she cast this spell on me.”

Rumple’s eyes narrowed like he was searching for a lie. He didn’t find it.

“You’re no use to me then,” Rumple said, waving his hand. A cloud of purple smoke surrounded Hook and he dropped to the floor of the forest. In the distance, he could hear the sounds of an inn. He swore and looked down at his left arm. His hook was still missing, and if he had to guess, he was leagues away from the Dark One’s castle. He was going to have to find another way to get his revenge.

OOooOOooOOooOO

The fairies took her by ship. Emma had never been on the open sea, aside from her brush with escape a year before. She loved it. The wind whistled through her hair and blew her cloak behind her while Blue kept watch from the prow.

“Where are we going?” Emma asked.

“Arendelle,” Blue said. “Queen Elsa can do magic as well and she had an awful time figuring out how to use it.”

“But she figured it out?” Emma asked.

“Eventually,” Blue said. “The study of magic isn’t a short process, Princess. I hope you know that.”

“Please just call me Emma,” Emma replied, sitting in the seat next to Blue.

“Very well, Emma,” Blue said. “I hope you understand that magic is a gift, and it’s not one easy to come by.”

“Yeah, it doesn’t really feel like a gift,” Emma said. Blue smiled sadly at her and patted Emma’s hand. Emma waited for her to say something about believing in herself, but she didn’t.

Instead, Emma turned to watch the waves, saw them cresting and breaking on the choppy waters. It took two weeks to cross the ocean, and then the first land came into view.

“What kingdom is that?” Emma asked, pointing at the golden castle that rose from the sea on its own island.

“Corona,” Blue said. “Queen Rapunzel and her husband Eugene rule it. It’s a lovely kingdom if you ever want to visit.”

Emma nodded and sat back on her seat. She was ready to be on solid ground again and wished they could stop in Corona for a while, but that didn’t seem to be in the cards. Instead, they continued to sail north, passing the islands that dotted the kingdom of Corona until startling mountains rose from the sea, capped with brilliant white snow.

“What’s that?” Emma asked.

“Arendelle,” Blue said, smiling gently at her. They sailed into the port and were greeted by a large animal with antlers that Emma couldn’t identify. It was only late September, but it was already starting to get cold and she wrapped her cloak around her shoulders while the animal sniffed her.

“What is that?” Emma asked.

“It’s a reindeer,” a young man said, clapping the beast on its shaggy neck. “His name’s Kristoff.”

“You…you named a reindeer?” Emma asked, searching the man’s face for some kind of explanation. He was tall and strapping with impressively bright red hair.

“Well sure,” he said. “You guys from the south name your horses, right?”

“Yeah,” Emma agreed. “Uh…”

The reindeer Kristoff was sniffing Emma curiously and she was a little concerned his antlers were going to gore her.

“I’m Kai,” the man said, offering Emma his hand to shake. Blue wasn’t intervening, so Emma guessed they weren’t in any kind of trouble. “Kai Kristoffson.”

Emma searched her memory for anything she knew about names in Arendelle. “Doesn’t that mean your dad’s name is Kristoff?”

“Yeah,” Kai agreed.

“You named the reindeer after your dad?” Emma asked.

Kai shrugged and looked mildly guilty.

“Kai!” a girl shouted, appearing out of nowhere and glaring at him with her hands on her hips. Emma immediately identified her as Kai’s sister. “Hi, welcome to Arendelle. I’m Princess Gerda.”

“Princess Emma,” Emma replied, curtseying as was appropriate.

“Princess?” Kai and Gerda asked in perfect unison, looking surprised.

“Princess of where?” Gerda asked.

“The Enchanted Forest,” Emma replied. “I’m here to see Queen Elsa. Is she your mother?”

“Our aunt,” Gerda replied. “Right this way to the palace.”

Emma followed them across a bridge to the palace and decided she liked Arendelle. It was cold, but they were much farther north than the Enchanted Forest, so that was sort of to be expected. They led her to the great hall where a regal woman was seated on the throne listening to the people. Emma was used to the scene since it was something her parents did with frequency.

Queen Elsa was beautiful. She had ice blonde hair that fell over her shoulder in a braid and a matching icy dress. Emma could feel the power radiating from her even on the other side of the great hall. She had the same ageless look as most magic users Emma had ever heard of, like she hadn’t aged a day between turning twenty and the present.

When Elsa caught sight of her niece and nephew and the newcomers, she excused herself from hearing petitions and headed into the back hallway. Kai and Gerda led Emma through a different side door and into the same hall, where Elsa beckoned them into a private lounge.

“Who have you two brought me now?” Elsa asked, crossing to the side board and pouring four cups of something that smelled heavenly. Emma couldn’t imagine what it was until she was handed one of the teacups and discovered it was hot chocolate. She started to ask if Blue was going to get a cup as well, but she’d disappeared without saying goodbye. Emma hoped she was off to tell Snow and David that Emma was fine.

“My name is Emma,” Emma said. “I’m the princess of the Enchanted Forest.”

“It was my understanding that Misthaven had multiple princesses and kingdoms,” Elsa said.

“Sort of,” Emma said. “I’m the daughter of the high king and queen.”

“Ah,” Elsa said. “And what brings you to Arendelle, Emma?”

Emma looked down at her hot chocolate and willed it not to shatter like so many things did when she touched them.

“I can do magic,” she said. “The fairies said they couldn’t teach me how to control it themselves, but that you might be able to help me.”

Emma was aware of Kai and Gerda swapping looks. Neither of them said anything, however.

“What sort of magic can you do, Emma?” Elsa asked.

“I don’t really know,” Emma admitted. “I only found out I could use magic about a year ago.”

Elsa’s brow furrowed. “You never used magic by accident as a child?”

Emma shook her head.

“Well, I’ll teach you what I can, but I’m not sure how much help I’ll be,” Elsa said. “My magic is very specific.”

To demonstrate, she ran her finger around the rim of her teacup. The chocolate inside froze solid instantly. Emma blinked. She’d never seen magic that wasn’t immediately harmful.

“Maybe you could try to thaw it,” Elsa suggested, handing her the cup of frozen chocolate.

It took Emma a month to even achieve slush. She managed it finally on her nineteenth birthday and was so excited by her progress that she ran to the kitchens to show Kai and Gerda as soon as she’d turned the solid chocolate ice into mush. They were amused by her enthusiasm and let her take it off to Elsa.

“Good job,” Elsa said, and then to Emma’s horror, she froze the chocolate again.

“Why did you do that?” Emma asked.

“You have to be able to repeat the result if you want to truly master it,” Elsa said. “When I was trying to learn to control my magic, I thought the best thing I could do was suppress it and pretend it didn’t exist. That went…poorly, to say the least. Now do it again.”

Emma spent the month of November staring at the teacup of frozen hot chocolate. She wasn’t sure how she’d managed to make slush, and wasn’t sure how she was going to pull off making slush again, let alone turning it to liquid. The outside environment certainly wasn’t going to help. The Arendelle winter was setting in and she was pretty sure she was going to freeze to death before she melted the hot chocolate.

By December, she was almost used to the cold, even while it got worse and worse. It was in January that she realised she wasn’t cold at all. Curiously, she took off her cloak and stepped into the courtyard.

“Are you insane?” Kai demanded, chasing after her with a fur lined cloak.

“I’m not cold,” Emma replied, holding her hand out. A few snowflakes fell onto her palm and dissolved instantly.

Kai, who was probably the second friend Emma had ever made, pressed the back of his hand to Emma’s neck.

“You feel cold,” he said. “Come back inside before you freeze. My mom froze solid once and no one wants that, you know? That takes an act of true love to break and from everything you’ve said about your life, that might take…”

“Some kind of miracle?” Emma suggested, following Kai back into the palace. He nodded.

“So you’ve been trying to warm the hot chocolate right?” Gerda asked later when Emma explained her lack of coldness. “What if you’ve been warming yourself instead?”

Emma considered. It could be true, she realised. She picked up the teacup and watched as the hot chocolate slowly melted. It thawed all the way until it started to steam. Almost accidentally, Emma had made herself into a walking heater.

Either way, it was working. She was starting to control her magic.

OOooOOooOOooOO

Regina had a headache. She’d never had a headache quite as intense before in her life and she couldn’t for the life of her figure out what caused it. She blinked groggily and looked around. She was in her bedchamber in her castle in her father’s old kingdom, exactly where she’d been when she remembered going to sleep. But the air was different. It was autumn and it had definitely been spring when Snow White and her Prince Charming had banished Regina and her father to the south.

Regina blinked again, which was when she noticed a familiar figure standing at the balcony, looking out over the kingdom.

“Mother?” she asked. She was supposed to be dead. Regina had sent that pirate to kill her months ago. Surely, Cora was in a tomb.

“Oh good, you’re awake,” Cora said, smiling brilliantly at her.

“But you were dead,” Regina replied, standing and swaying unsteadily on her feet. Something was drastically wrong, but she couldn’t figure out what.

“Because you sent that pirate to kill me?” Cora asked. She laughed. “Nonsense. That man couldn’t kill anyone even if he had his heart set on it.”

“Then why are you here?” Regina asked.

“Oh my dear,” Cora said. “You’ve been asleep a very long time. You must be discombobulated. Let me get you something to drink.”

She clapped and a small child came out of the hallway. The boy couldn’t be older than five, of that Regina was sure. He was carrying a tray with a pitcher on it and stared at the ground while he walked.

Cora took the pitcher and filled the two glasses before handing one to Regina. The child shuffled out of the room and Regina felt nauseous. Who knew where that child had come from or what Cora had done to his parents.

“What do you mean I’ve been asleep a long time?” Regina asked.

“Well, when you wouldn’t go through with your revenge, I had to step in and help,” Cora said. “I found you the perfect revenge. Snow White’s daughter can do magic.”

“But she’s nothing more than a baby,” Regina said.

“Oh Regina,” Cora said, cupping the side of Regina’s face. “She’s twenty. Today’s even her birthday.”

“You put me under a sleeping curse?” Regina demanded, stepping away from her mother. “How dare you--”

“It was only until the time was right for your new revenge,” Cora interrupted. “The girl’s magic is unstable from what I’ve heard of it.”

“What you’ve heard?” Regina asked, deciding she could deal with her mother’s sleeping curse later.

Cora smiled. “All we have to do is get the girl and we can start.”

“Start what?” Regina demanded. At some point, she’d need to find that pirate and extract an explanation about why he’d lied about her mother’s death.

“Snow White’s daughter can use magic,” Cora said, with a patient smile that said Regina was being intentionally stupid.

“She’s the product of true love,” Regina said. “All it’s going to be is light magic. I don’t see how that helps--”

“Oh Regina, didn’t Rumple teach you anything about magic?” Cora asked, her veneer of motherly affection dropping. “Children who are the product of true love are capable of the purest light magic, yes, but they’re also capable of the darkest, most evil magic as well.”

Regina stared at her. “What are you saying?”

“What could possibly hurt Snow White more than turning her beloved, beautiful, pure daughter into a sorceress like us?” Cora asked. “We’re going to blacken that girl’s heart, Regina. Together. And when we’re done with her, Snow White won’t even be able to stand the sight of her precious child. How does that sound?”

“That sounds…” Regina started, considering her words carefully. “Evil.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, re the next generation of royals: Alexandra is Cinderella’s daughter, as told by the show. Aurora and Phillip named their son Phillip, as told by the Once Upon a Time wiki, at least as far as I know. Ariel and Eric’s daughter Melody is named for the character in The Little Mermaid II: Return to the Sea (because that shit was my jam when I was seven). Anna and Kristoff’s kids are named Kai and Gerda after the characters in the original fairy tale The Snow Queen, which Frozen was supposedly based on. Of course, my copy of the Snow Queen is in Russian, so I’m really not sure if that’s the appropriate English translation as I have never read it in English.


	4. Pirate

Emma stayed in Arendelle for a full year learning how to control her magic. She followed Elsa’s advice about not suppressing it, but rather finding outlets for it. Her most useful outlet in Arendelle was keeping herself and others warm, and she was pretty good at breaking things and putting them back together if she did say so herself. She didn’t know any tricks, but she could keep herself from accidentally exploding things, and besides, she could start fires now, which was handy for castle living. But she was homesick, and she wanted to see her parents and her son. Henry had to be practically giant by now.

“You know, you’re welcome to stay,” Princess Anna said, hugging Emma tightly while the entire royal family saw her off at the docks.

“Thank you,” Emma said, hugging Elsa. “I’ll come back whenever I can. Thank you so much for everything.”

“Of course,” Elsa said. “Take care of yourself.”

“I will,” Emma promised, hugging Gerda next. Kai squeezed her so tightly she thought she might burst. When he let go of her, she handed him a piece of paper that made Kai’s parents stare at them suspiciously.

“It’s Princess Melody of the Maritime Kingdom’s address,” Kai explained, flushing and scratching the back of his head awkwardly. Emma shook her head fondly.

“Oh, Emma, when you get back to Misthaven, there’s a shepherd named David who lives in the countryside,” Anna said. “If you happen to pass by, would you tell him Joan says hi?”

Emma blinked. “You’re Joan?”

“It’s a long story,” Anna said.

“And the shepherd named David kind of had his own long story,” Emma replied. “Since he kind of married Snow White and is kind of my dad.”

Anna’s jaw dropped and Kristoff howled with laughter.

“We’ll have to come visit Misthaven,” Elsa said. “Sometime soon.”

“That would be great,” Emma said, hugging them all one last time before she stepped onto the ship that would take her home.

As they cast off to sea, she stared back at Arendelle. She was going to miss it quite a lot, and she was going to miss the fact that no one in the palace looked at her strangely because she could do magic in quite the same way the people back in the Enchanted Forest did. At the thought, pangs of anxiety started coursing through her chest. It was always how her magic got out of control, so she found an unoccupied post of the ship and pressed her back to it. Nothing was attacking her, there was nothing coming after her, she was perfectly safe. Her parents were going to be delighted to see her, especially since she could control her magic except in extreme circumstances. She was going to be okay. And she was going home.

They were only four days into their voyage when she heard the sailors start to mutter to each other while looking darkly at the sky. She followed their gaze and saw a black sky in the distance.

“Is that something we should be worried about?” she asked the captain.

He stared at the black columns of cloud with a whether eye. “Aye, princess, ‘tis.”

The sailors were overwrought with a nervous energy the rest of the day and Emma went to sleep in her cabin with her cloak wrapped tightly around her shoulders. The sea was getting choppy while she tried to fall asleep. The ship rocked and pitched from side to side so hard she couldn’t help but throw up. When she ran onto the deck to get away from the confinement of the cabin, she was immediately soaked by the falling rain.

“Get below decks, Princess!” one of the sailors shouted.

“I want to help!” Emma called back, her voice barely audible over the thunder and the rain and the sounds of the waves crashing across the bow.

The sailor looked concerned, but threw her a rope to lash down. Emma tied it off, grateful she’d spent the summer learning how to sail on the fjords in Arendelle.

The storm boomed around them, tossing the ship this way and that across the crests of waves taller than their mast. Before anyone could react, a bolt of lightning blasted from the storm clouds and struck their mizzenmast, setting it on fire and shattering it into pieces, spreading burning shards of wood across the deck. The crew screamed and started trying to put out the flames. Emma joined them, calling the fire to her hands as best she could and dispelling it into the waves. The fire disappeared into quickly dissipated puffs of steam and the crewmen looked delighted.

“Any chance you can get rid of the lightning?” the captain called, lowering the sails to try and stop the storm from blowing them over.

“No!” Emma shouted back. She didn’t know if the captain heard her, because another strike of lightning hit the main mast and cracked it. There was a moment of silent horror while they went over the top of a wave, and then the mast started to fall. It crashed through the deck and split the ship in half, sending sailors and pieces of the ship into the water. Emma only had a few seconds to realise what was about to happen before a giant wave broke across what was left of the gunwale and the ship was gone.

The cold water didn’t bother Emma since she knew how to counteract cold. She just had time to grab hold of a floating piece of the ship before a pulley fell from the sail and struck her in the head. She dropped to the piece of siding, unconscious, while the storm raged on.

OOooOOooOOooOO

“What I don’t understand, Mother, is how you’re going to convince the princess to take up dark magic,” Regina said, glaring at Cora’s head while they sat in the parlour sipping their afternoon tea.

“I’m not going to, silly girl,” Cora replied. “You are. You’ll just have to give her something to want.”

Regina didn’t let the fact she was unimpressed show on her face. She had taken up dark magic to get revenge on Snow White, ruin Snow’s happy ending the same way the stupid child had ruined hers, and now she had to find some way to convince Snow’s daughter to get revenge.

“That’ll be challenging, since I know nothing about the girl,” Regina said. “Since I’ve been asleep her entire life. And you still haven’t told me where my father is.”

Cora looked away and pursed her lips. “Every challenge can be overcome, Regina.”

“Where’s my father?” Regina demanded.

Cora sighed. “You mean the man you couldn’t kill even to get your own happiness? I put him under the sleeping curse as well.”

“Then why isn’t he awake and here?” Regina snapped. “He would’ve come here immediately, unless you did something else to him.”

“It turns out there’s a reason not to put older people under a sleeping enchantment,” Cora said. “His heart wasn’t strong enough to withstand it. I’m afraid he’s dead.”

Regina’s chest felt hollow. For a brief moment, she considered the idea her mother had taken her heart, but a quick two seconds of internal searching proved that false.

“You killed him?” Regina asked, struggling to hold back the pain of her father’s passing. She couldn’t’ show weakness in front of Cora. That would be the moment Cora won.

“It wasn’t on purpose, dear,” Cora said. “You mustn’t blame me. I was only doing what’s best for you. Now where is that boy with the tea?”

Regina was glad Cora was looking elsewhere, because it gave her a moment to mourn her father silently.

“Roland!” Cora shouted. The little kitchen boy shuffled into the lounge with the tray of tea. He was a sweet child, Regina discovered. He had giant dark eyes and was clearly scared of Cora. Regina hated to see that, even if his fear was well placed.

“Thank you,” Regina said, offering the child a quick smile while she took the tea.

Roland smiled just as quickly back and ran out of the room before Cora could ask anything else of him.

“Where did you get that child?” Regina asked. “He wasn’t in my employ when you cast the sleeping curse.”

“No, I found him in the village,” Cora said. “Sweet little thing, isn’t he? He was an orphan, no parents to speak of. I thought you could use a new kitchen boy.”

“You’re sure he had no parents?” Regina asked.

“I believe you executed his mother,” Cora replied with a casual shrug. “Who knows what happened to his father?”

Regina nodded slowly. “So how are we supposed to find this Princess Emma?”

“I’ve got someone on it,” Cora said, reaching into the folds of her skirt. She pulled out a pouch that pulsed with a heart. Regina nodded in understanding.

“So now what do we do?” she asked.

“We wait,” Cora replied.

OOooOOooOOooOO

“Your majesties?”

The fairy speaking was big, and stared at her pink clad toes while she addressed Snow and David.

“What is it, Pink?” Snow asked.

“It’s Nova, your majesty,” the fairy replied. Snow recognised the name. She was the fairy Grumpy was in love with. Snow chose not to comment, or to beckon her captain of the guard since he’d be heartbroken to see her.

“My apologies, Nova,” Snow said. “What is it?”

“I come bearing news from Arendelle,” Nova said. Her voice trembled and Snow could’ve sworn she saw a tear fall from the fairy’s face. “Princess Emma left the kingdom five days ago, headed back to the Enchanted Forest on the Evangeline.”

“Yes, she wrote us to say she was coming home,” David replied, squeezing Snow’s shoulder. “Has something happened?”

Nova sniffed and pulled something from her bag. She set the odd shaped piece of wood on the table in front of the king and queen and stepped back respectfully, her head still bowed.

“What is that?” Snow asked, picking up the wood. The letters “geline” could be made out in the pain that coated the wood.

“It was the only piece the mermaids could carry to the surface,” Nova said. “I’m so sorry, your majesties. Princess Emma is dead.”

OOooOOooOOooOO

She wasn’t dead. That much Emma was sure of. But she was back on a ship, and she had no idea what ship it was. She was still damp from her dip in the ocean and the air around her was cold and even damper. She looked around and realised she was in the brig.

“Are you kidding me?” she asked, shaking the bars of the cell.

“It’s locked pretty tight,” a woman said from the next cell. Emma turned and blinked at her. She had dark hair and was wearing leather armour while she sat against the wall of her cell.

“Who has us?” Emma asked.

“Remember King George?” the woman asked. “You’re the girl they pulled out of the ocean, right?”

“Apparently,” Emma said, touching the throbbing place on her skull. “I don’t remember much of it though. I thought King George was banished.”

“So did I, but I was in a sleeping curse for twenty years, so anything could’ve happened,” the woman replied. “What’s your name?”

“Emma,” Emma said. “You?”

“Mulan,” she said.

“How’d you get picked up by King George?” Emma asked.

“I woke up from the sleeping curse in the Evil Queen’s kingdom two weeks ago, and my friends and I had to split up to look for something, but before I could find it, I got grabbed for ransom,” Mulan replied.

“There’s a price on your head?” Emma asked curiously.

Mulan shrugged. “I think King George is mostly just hoping he can use me to bargain his way into the Evil Queen’s good graces. What about you? What would he want with you?”

“King George?” Emma asked. She considered the information David and Snow had given her about her adoptive grandfather. “He’s kind of…mad at my parents. But I don’t think he knows who I am, so it’s probably just a fluke.”

“What does he have against your parents?” Mulan asked.

“Why does the Evil Queen want you?” Emma replied.

Mulan nodded like that was a reasonable response. Neither of them needed to share more information than strictly necessary.

“Why haven’t you tried to break out?” Emma asked.

“Who says I haven’t?” Mulan replied. “The only problem is, once you get out, we’re kind of in the middle of the ocean.”

Emma swore and sat back against the wall of the ship. They’d need to wait for the right moment. Hopefully, Mulan was a good fighter and then they could…could do what? Take over the ship? That was painfully optimistic and Emma was pretty sure they would need more than two people to crew the ship.

“Do you have a hairpin?” she asked.

“No,” Mulan said, raising her eyebrows. “I did, but because I’m one of the Mer—because of who I am they took it before I could pick the lock.”

Emma frowned. They needed something to pick the locks and they needed something to get control of the ship and an escape plan.

“When they took you aboard, were there lifeboats?” Emma asked.

“Nope,” Mulan said. “And you need at least four people to crew the ship, so unless you’ve got a couple people hidden in your skirts, we’re screwed.”

Emma considered this new information. She didn’t know how to get out of it, especially because she was pretty sure if King George figured out who she was, he’d mail her head to her parents.

She quickly figured out the routine of their imprisonment. One of the soldiers – not sailors, but a whole separate set of armed guards – would bring them food once a day and then disappear, always around nightfall.

“We were four days out of Arendelle when I was shipwrecked,” Emma said. “And they picked you up in the south, and so they’re probably heading for my pare—for the King and Queen’s land, since King George has a problem with them.”

“Well, wouldn’t you have a problem with your son if he banished you from your own kingdom?” Mulan asked.

Emma tried to imagine Henry as a grown up banishing her from her kingdom and the idea was so absurd she almost laughed.

“He poisoned Snow White once so she wouldn’t be able to have children,” Emma replied. “Years before they banished him.”

Mulan considered. “Alright then,” she said. “So if you were four days out of Arendelle and you’ve been aboard three, we’re a week out of the Enchanted Forest, right? So if we make our escape the day before we make port, we should be close enough to shore that we can manage with two people, but we’re going to have to run aground.”

“That’s fine,” Emma said. “So we’ve got six days to figure out how we’re going to get out of these cells.”

“Exactly,” Mulan said.

Emma spent the rest of the day trying to figure out if she could break the locks with her magic. She didn’t want to test it until after the guard came to feed them, because if she could, she didn’t want to give anything away. But the guard never came.

“Isn’t it late?” Emma asked.

“Yeah,” Mulan agreed, standing up and leaning against the bars of her cell. She stared into the middle distance with a look of intense concentration.

“What are you--”

“Shh!” Mulan hissed. “Listen.”

Emma listened. Just barely over the sound of the waves, she could hear an odd whistling sound.

“What is that?” she asked.

“Cannon fire!” Mulan shouted, diving away from the bars on her cell just as a steel ball crashed through the side of the ship and shattered the bars, springing her cell open. Emma’s remained firmly shut.

Mulan pulled on the bars, oblivious to the noises of panic from the decks and the shouts and blasts of more cannons coming from their attackers and their own ship.

“Wait, I’ve got it,” Emma said. “Stand back.”

Mulan stepped back and Emma concentrated as best she could before she blasted the lock of her cell. It shattered, as did the hinges, and the whole contraption flew backwards catching an approaching guard full on.

“You knocked him out,” Mulan said, sounding impressed while she looted the man for his weapons. She tossed Emma his sword and grabbed the keys he was holding.

“You’re not…upset I can do magic?” Emma asked, following her down the corridor to a small arms locker.

“When I ran off and joined the army, my ancestors sent a talking dragon to help me,” Mulan replied. “And one of my best friends spent a good twelve years as a yaoguai. Based on what you just did, your magic is more useful, so…”

She trailed off as the lock of the weapons locker popped open and she burst in, grabbed a sword that had a belt which perfectly matched her armour, and then led the way to the deck. Emma wished she hadn’t been travelling in appropriately princessy attire because it was very inconvenient when it came to fighting her way off King George’s ship.

The deck was in chaos. The king’s soldiers were being obliterated by the attacking ship, who appeared to be pirates. Emma swore and lifted her stolen sword to block the swing of one of the soldiers.

“The prisoners have escaped!” the guard shouted. Emma knocked him on the head with the hilt of her sword and he crumpled to the deck.

“Do the pirates have longboats?” Mulan asked, her back pressed to Emma’s. Emma beat back another guard, sending him straight into a pair of pirates who promptly flipped him over the gunwale into the ocean between the two ships. Emma scanned the opposite deck.

“Yeah!” she said. “We’ll have to swing over!”

She kicked a soldier in the stomach and sent him sprawling into one of the pirates - a tall man with black hair who seemed oddly familiar. To her surprise, none of the pirates seemed interested in them, just in the king’s guards.

“Or you could just accept the offer of rescue and come aboard as a guest,” the black haired pirate said, tossing the guard aside and grinning at Emma.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Emma said, taking in the leather-clad, blue eyed, hook-handed pirate holding a sword.

“Sorry love,” Hook replied, catching one of the guard’s swords with his hook and disarming the man with a twist of his wrist.

“You know these guys Emma?” Mulan asked, backing up. Their back to back defence formation shifted to a triangle to include Hook, who, whatever his motives may have been, seemed to be on their side.

“He tried to ransom me back to my father once,” Emma explained, catching a guard with a blast of magic and sending him flying.

“Actually, darling, I’m not here for you,” Hook replied. “Rather for the Merry Man you’ve made a companion of.”

“Did Robin send you?” Mulan asked, beating back the guard running straight at them.

“Robin? Like Robin Hood?” Emma asked, turning to look over her shoulder at Mulan. There was a clash of metal above her head and when she looked back, Hook was holding the soldier’s sword in his hook, just above Emma’s exposed neck.

“Now’s not the time, love,” he said while Emma stabbed the guard in the stomach. His shriek of pain blocked out Hook’s grunt. Emma twisted to see a gash on his side that he’d exposed to protect her.

“Captain!” a pirate in a red hat shouted, his eyes wide with concern.

“Get the ladies back to the ship, Smee!” Hook called back, fighting off the guards with his hook, his good hand pressed to his side.

The red-hatted pirate fought his way through the legion of soldiers and grabbed Emma by the wrist, pulling her to the side of the ship. He handed her a thick rope.

“Hold on,” he instructed. Emma held on and he pushed her over the side. She swung across the chasm between the boats and landed on the deck of the pirate ship. As soon as her boots touched wood, she was swept off to a cabin and offered a comfortable seat. Moments later, Mulan was given the same treatment.

Within seconds of Mulan’s arrival, the cannons blasted again, and then the Jolly Roger started to move. Emma wasn’t really in any position to know which direction they were headed. She didn’t have to wait long before Captain Hook joined them in the cabin. He ignored them while he fished through one of the cabinets for a bandage and a flask of rum. He leaned against the drafting table, attempting to patch the cut on his side without help until Emma huffed in exasperation and snatched the bandage and the rum from him. He watched her with just a hint of amusement while she fixed his side.

“Why are you tracking down King George to rescue Mulan?” she asked, returning to her seat.

“There’s a certain person who has something of mine I’d like back and I lack the necessary qualifications to reacquire it myself, so Robin Hood offered me a hand if I would in turn retrieve his wayward Merry Man,” Hook explained.

Mulan seemed ready to accept this as reasonable and picked up one of the green apples on the table.

“You’re one of the Merry Men?” Emma asked. “I thought they were all…men.”

“I’m the only woman,” Mulan replied. “It was a fairly recent change before the kingdom we were in got cursed.”

Emma nodded slowly. “And what is Robin Hood getting back for you?” Emma asked. “Is it your hand?”

Hook looked down at his silver hook like he hadn’t really considered it. “Erm, no, the Dark One has that,” he said. “I misplaced something else in the Evil Queen’s kingdom.”

“What was it?” Emma asked.

“A trifle really,” Hook assured her. “It just has…sentimental value.”

“Great, well, you can drop me at the next port,” Emma replied. “I can make my way home from there.”

Hook looked like he might argue, but instead he simply nodded. “As you wish,” he said.

Emma discovered quite quickly that Hook hadn’t lied about the Jolly Roger being the fastest ship in the realm. It should’ve taken them a good ten days to reach the southern kingdom, but they kept up a steady speed and were halfway there only three days later.

“Where did you learn how to sail, Emma?” Mulan asked while they walked the deck of the ship. Emma absolutely did not trust Hook to let her go once they reached land, since he’d probably want to extort some kind of payment from her parents. As such, she’d spent most of her time on the Jolly Roger listening to Mulan’s stories about being in the army back in her kingdom, and her adventures with Phillip while they searched for Aurora. Mulan was glad to hear that Phillip and Aurora were happy, especially since she hadn’t seen them in twenty years.

“In Arendelle,” Emma replied. “I lived there for the past year and there’s great sailing in the summers.”

“I’ve never been to Arendelle,” Mulan said. “I hear it’s nice though. How’d you end up there?”

“I went to study magic with Queen Elsa,” Emma replied before she remembered Mulan didn’t know she was the princess.

“You know the Queen of Arendelle?” Mulan asked, her eyes wide.

“Didn’t you hear?” Hook asked, appearing behind them. “Emma’s Snow White’s daughter.”

Mulan’s jaw dropped. “You’re the princess?”

“Yeah,” Emma admitted. “That’s why I kind of had to figure out how to control my magic.”

She thought she saw a soft expression in Hook’s eyes, but it was gone before she could get a better look.

“Not to alarm you, your highness, but we’re being followed,” Hook said.

“By what?” Mulan asked.

“The fastest ship in the realm,” Hook replied, wincing and offering her the spyglass.

“I thought you said the Jolly Roger was the fastest,” Emma said, accepting the spyglass Mulan handed her. The ship following them was monstrous, and so covered in barnacles and seaweed Emma was surprised it was above the waves.

“What ship is that?” Mulan asked.

Captain Hook grimaced at them and took his spyglass back. “The Flying Dutchman.”

He turned and started issuing orders for the anchor to be lowered and the sails furled, and the munitions made ready just in case. Emma and Mulan exchanged looks.

“The Flying Dutchman’s a legend,” Emma said.

“Aye, and until two years ago, you thought the Jolly Roger was a legend as well, love,” Hook called over his shoulder. “Sadly, neither the Flying Dutchman nor Davy Jones is a myth.”

Emma could recall horrifying tales of the Flying Dutchman taking ships and souls whenever it felt like it. According to one nautical history she’d read years ago, there had been a brief period of a few decades where the Flying Dutchman was captained by someone reasonable and had only ferried the souls lost at sea, but that had ended centuries ago.

“Men, make ready for Captain Jones,” Hook commanded, standing in the centre of the deck with his hand on his sword. Emma suddenly wanted a sword of her own, but out of fear for his own life, Hook had neglected to give her one. Mulan had the best sword in the realm, which she was very proud of, so Emma intended to stay near her as long as possible.

The Dutchman coasted to a stop parallel to the Jolly Roger and Emma saw the crew standing aboard and jeering at Hook’s men. At their centre was a heavily bearded man with a tri-corn hat and his hand on the hilt of his sword.

When the ships were close together, the Dutchman’s crew lowered a plank between the two and their captain strolled across onto the Jolly Roger. The ropes twitched like they’d suddenly come to life, but nothing happened.

“Captain Hook,” Davy Jones said, examining the deck of the Jolly Roger.

“Captain Jones,” Hook replied. Unless Emma was very mistaken, he didn’t look concerned for his safety. He looked resigned and somewhat nervous.

“What witch put a curse on you this time, Killian?” Davy Jones asked, striding across the deck to inspect it.

“What do you want?” Hook asked.

“Am I not allowed to say hello?” Davy Jones asked, giving Hook a dramatically affronted look. “You offend me, boy.”

“I have cargo to deliver,” Hook replied, nodding at Emma and Mulan.

“Cargo, Killian?” Davy Jones asked.

“I was contracted to rescue them,” Hook replied. “What’s it to you?”

“Am I not allowed to take an interest in your life, boy?” Davy Jones asked. Emma frowned. The way they were interacting definitely showed familiarity. They’d known each other a long time, and Hook had been around for a few centuries, which made Emma think that they’d known each other since before the Jolly Roger became a legend.

“No, you’re not,” Hook snapped, his knuckles turning white on the hilt of his sword. “And I have a schedule to keep, so if you wouldn’t mind letting us go.”

Davy Jones scanned him again and then his eyes flicked over to Emma. “Fine,” he said. “We can catch up some other time.”

He started to leave, and paused halfway across the gangplank.

“What now?” Hook asked.

Davy Jones smiled, a disturbing, shark-like smile. “The blonde reminds me of Elizabeth.”

OOooOOooOOooOO

It took Killian the better part of a bottle of rum to shake off the residual ill feeling that always came with run ins with the Flying Dutchman. He was halfway to drunk when the princess appeared at his cabin door. He just barely resisted telling her to piss off.

Here he’d gone to all this trouble since the Dark One let him free. He got a new hook, he found his crew, he found his ship, and found someone who was going to help him steal his heart back from Cora so he could avoid kidnapping Emma. Of course, he’d agreed to go rescue Robin Hood’s wayward band member, and _of course_ the same bastard had taken Emma hostage. It wasn’t as though he could leave her in King George’s clutches since the bastard would probably kill her. And now she was on his ship, unknowingly putting herself in immediate danger. Killian didn’t know what Cora wanted with her and her magic, or how Rumpelstiltskin intended to use her to find Baelfire, but he was sure neither option involved pleasantries.

“What can I do for you, love?” he asked, leaning back against his cot and taking another swig from his bottle of rum.

“Do all legendary, centuries old, and supposedly fictional pirates know each other?” she asked, inviting herself to one of his chairs.

“Which do you know of besides myself and the Dutchman’s captain?” Killian asked, offering her the bottle of rum. To his surprise, she accepted and took a swig without flinching.

“I don’t know,” Emma said. She handed the bottle back. “Who’s Elizabeth?”

“You heard that?” Killian asked. Emma nodded. “He was referring to Elizabeth Swan, the last pirate king. And he’s right, you do resemble her after a fashion.”

Emma seemed unsure of what to do with that information. “So how do you know Davy Jones?”

“His name’s not Davy,” Killian replied. “It’s Iain.”

“I thought you said Davy Jones wasn’t a myth,” Emma said, taking the bottle back. Killian reflected that he wouldn’t be sharing any of this information if he wasn’t a little drunk.

“He’s not, but the original Davy Jones’s been dead two and a half centuries,” Killian replied. “Then for a while it was a man named Will Turner, who was coincidentally married to the pirate king Elizabeth Swan, and then it was Iain Jones.”

Emma’s eyes narrowed almost imperceptibly like she was trying to figure out his tone. Killian wished her luck since he was usually incapable of understanding his own conflicting emotions when it came to his early childhood and life since then. It had only got more challenging to sort through since Cora ripped his heart from his chest.

“So how did you meet the current Captain Jones, Killian?” Emma asked. Something about the way she said his name did strange things to Killian’s insides. That or it was just the abundance of rum in his bloodstream. “Killian what?”

“Jones,” he replied, giving her a wry smile and taking the bottle of rum back.

Emma’s green eyes, reminiscent of the sea and shadowed from lack of sleep, widened.

“He’s your father?” she guessed.

“Cheers, love,” Killian replied, finishing off the bottle. “Out of curiosity, did your parents intentionally send you to Arendelle or did you finally succeed in running away?”

“They encouraged me to go,” Emma said. “Not that it’s any of your business.”

“Maybe not, but I saw your face when you did magic in that inn,” Killian replied. Emma glared at him. “You didn’t even know you could do magic, did you?”

Emma glared at him for another second and then stormed out of his cabin, slamming the door behind her. The sound echoed strangely in Killian’s head. It was just like him to try and do the right thing – avoid the princess like she had a plague that would strip him of his youth and leave him showing his actual age of two hundred and twenty something late, only to accidentally rescue her. It served him right after everything else he’d done in his life.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I personally vote for A&E to actually make Davy Jones Killian’s dad, but who knows if that’ll ever happen. It’s all Disney anyway. Side Note: I'm like three episodes behind on the current season so I have no idea if we've learned anything that would contradict this.


	5. Imprisoned

The Jolly Roger reached the port in the southern kingdom two days after their encounter with the Flying Dutchman and Hook’s father. Emma was glad to be on solid ground and immediately started looking for a horse to borrow to get back to her parents’ kingdom.

“You can’t leave,” Hook said when she tried to walk off. Emma shook him off and started to walk away, but he caught her arm. “I’m sorry, but--”

He didn’t get any farther than that before a cloth bag dropped over Emma’s head and she was pitched into a cart. There was a thud from beside her and another body dropped on top of her. Based on the smell of leather and ocean that accompanied the limp and unconscious form, she guessed it was Hook.

“Let me go!” she commanded.

“Sorry, Emma,” Mulan replied as the cart started moving. “We can’t have people knowing where we make camp. It’s just a precaution.”

“Oh,” Emma said. “Would you get Hook off me at least?”

“Yeah,” Mulan agreed, and Hook’s bulk shifted off her.

“Do you know why he said I couldn’t leave?” Emma asked.

“No idea,” Mulan replied.

“You can badger him about it when he wakes,” a man said from the front of the cart.

They journeyed in silence. The sensation of the cart over the road was so different from the smooth sailing Jolly Roger that Emma started to get cart-sick. Every bump felt like it was stabbing directly into her bones and every turn made her stomach flip. It didn’t help that the last time she’d been in a cart, she’d been running away with Neal. That was simply an unpleasant association.

It was an hour or so later that they finally stopped. Hook had stirred a quarter hour before but hadn’t said anything and Emma wasn’t eager to talk to him anyway.

“Welcome to our camp,” the man driving the cart said, pulling the bag off Emma’s head. They had a nice set up, tents around a central fireplace. There were archery targets painted on the trees and a small crew of men sitting around the fire squabbling over breakfast.

“At attention, lads,” the driver commanded. He was tall and sandy haired and had sad eyes. Emma recognised him from the gallery of wanted posters in the palace she’d grown up in. It wasn’t any public place in the castle and Emma had only found it by accident, but it included Snow’s wanted posters from when she was Emma’s age, one of the posters they’d put up for Emma when she ran away, Robin Hood, and a few other outlaws with “hearts of gold” to quote her mother.

“Mulan!” the men shouted, jumping up from their breakfast and embracing their lost comrade. Emma found herself glancing uncertainly around and making eye contact with Hook. He grimaced awkwardly at her.

“And who’s this?” one of the Merry Men asked. He was younger than most of them, Emma noted.

“Captain Hook and…” Robin Hood prompted.

“Emma,” Emma said. She realised that most people had last names, even though she didn’t. “Uh, Swan.”

“Nice to meet you Emma Swan,” the young Merry Man replied. “You hungry?”

“Uh, sure,” Emma said, following him back to the fireside and accepting the plate of sausage and eggs he offered.

“I’m Will Scarlet,” he said. “How’d you get mixed up in all this?”

“I was on the same ship as Mulan,” Emma explained. “When Captain Hook came to break her out.”

Will nodded like this was reasonable and handed Hook a plate as well.

“Would you mind handing me a fork, Swan?” Hook asked, smirking at Emma. She glared at him but handed him one of the utensils.

“Did you find anything?” Mulan asked, joining them at the campfire. Emma figured out she was talking to Robin when he sighed.

“No,” he said.

“Mulan said you were looking for something?” Emma asked.

“When we woke up from the curse, my son was missing,” Robin replied. Emma guessed that explained his sad eyes. “We’ve been looking for him since.”

“Oh,” Emma said, looking down at her plate. Her son didn’t even know she was his mother. “I’m sorry.”

“Thank you,” Robin replied. “How did you end up aboard King George’s ship?”

“The ship I was sailing on wrecked in a storm,” Emma explained. “And I guess they fished me out of the ocean.”

“That’s bad luck,” Will said, filling her plate with more food.

“She followed by it, unfortunately,” Hook said. Emma glanced at him but he didn’t explain himself.

“Now, Hook, you said there was something you needed stolen,” Robin said. “And you returned Mulan to us like you promised, so how can we help you?”

Hook grimaced. “The Queen of Hearts--”

“Hey now, you didn’t say anything about going to Wonderland,” Will interrupted, his eyes wide.

“She’s not in Wonderland,” Hook replied. “She’s at the Evil Queen’s castle, and she stole something off me and I’d like it back.”

“Do you know where she keeps it?” Robin asked.

“Near her, I’d imagine,” Hook said. “But someone among you should help Miss Swan back to her parents’ home if you’ve got time.”

Emma frowned at him. She couldn’t fathom why a pirate wanted to help her.

“Will and I can take her,” Mulan offered. “It’s a week’s journey by land, isn’t it Emma?”

Emma nodded and it was decided that at first light, Will and Mulan would escort her north to her parents’ kingdom.

The night she spent with the Merry Men was possibly more fun than she’d had in Arendelle. She was pretty sure it was because none of them except Hook and Mulan knew she was the princess and they weren’t trying to impress her or follow any kind of etiquette. Instead there was an impromptu lute and fiddle concert and a loud round of sea shanties and ballads. Emma was surprised that Hook joined in when they started telling ghost stories. His were all of the sea and the horrors that lived there, some kind of horror story about a ship called the Black Pearl that was crewed by the damned and dragged to the depths by Davy Jones and the Flying Dutchman. The way he told it made Emma pretty sure it was not only true, but he’d been present for some part of it. He admitted later that night as the Merry Men went to sleep that his father had been a cabin boy on the Pearl during their thirteen years of sailing whilst undead.

“So has anyone in your family ever had a normal lifespan?” Emma asked.

“My brother,” Hook replied. “Goodnight, Swan.”

They left at first light. Mulan was all business, keeping watch in every direction while Will chattered on. Emma was grateful that one of the smaller Merry Men had lent her a pair of trousers and Robin had offered her a dagger for protection. It was much easier to travel this way than it had been in her dress. They made good time and by the fourth day, they were much closer to the castle than Emma had been in over a year.

“So where do you live?” Will asked, crunching on an apple and offering Emma one from his bag.

“Oh, thanks but no,” Emma said. “My family’s not big on apples.”

Will shrugged and tossed the fruit to Mulan. “So no apples then. What? Is your mother Snow White or something?”

“Uh…” Emma said.

There was a beat of silence while Will stared at her and then he whistled lowly. “Mulan, did you know?”

“Hook told me,” Mulan replied, continuing to lead the way through the forest.

“No wonder King George wanted you,” Will said. “Out of curiosity, how many evil grandparents do you have?”

“Sorry?” Emma replied.

“Well, King George, technically the Evil Queen is your mum’s stepmother,” Will said. “Any others hanging about we should watch out for?”

“Not that I’m aware of,” Emma said, stepping over a fallen log. They were nearing a village, and to her dismay, it was the same village where she’d first met Neal two years before. The villagers who saw them stared. It didn’t take Emma long to figure out why. All of them wore black armbands, and those who could afford it wore full black garments.

The three of them exchanged looks.

“Excuse me,” Mulan said, addressing a matronly villager. “Who passed away?”

“Where’ve you been living?” the woman asked. “The princess died two weeks ago.”

Emma’s jaw dropped. Her companions swapped looks and quickly bartered for horses before the three of them raced off to the castle as fast as the animals could carry them.

As they raced across the drawbridge, Emma saw the guard raise the alarm and lower the portcullis as quickly as they could. One of the foot soldiers guarding the gate halted them, a halberd pointed straight at their throats while they dismounted.

“Please, you have to let us in,” Emma said, out of breath from the quick ride.

“I have to do no such thing,” the guard replied.

“Do you know who she is?” Will demanded, gesturing at Emma like the man was stupid.

“The captain of the guard, it’s still Grumpy isn’t it?” Emma asked.

“How do you know that?” the guard asked.

“Go get him,” Emma said. “Please, it’s important.”

The soldier looked uncertain, but waved one of his fellows off to get the dwarf. Emma could only hope Grumpy would come to the gate himself instead of sending another lackey. If her parents thought she was dead – it didn’t bear thinking about.

“You know she’s the princess, right?” Will asked the soldier.

The man eyed him with clear disdain. “The princess drowned in a shipwreck, mate, I don’t know what news you’ve been getting.”

“He’s right,” Emma said. “I was pulled out of the ocean. It’s all a terrible misunderstanding. You’ve got to tell my parents I’m okay.”

“I don’t have to do anything,” the soldier said. “And all this sounds like some kind of trick the Evil Queen would pull. Drown the princess and send someone to impersonate her just to get inside the castle. You’re not a magic user are you?”

“What?” Emma asked, gaping at the man. “N-no!”

“Lying’s an ugly habit, dearie,” a man trilled from behind them.

Emma, Mulan, and Will turned quickly to discover a strange little man sitting on the drawbridge. His brackish skin glittered in the late afternoon sunlight.

“You can do magic of all sorts,” the man informed her.

“No, I--” Emma protested.

Before she could get a full denial out, the Dark One threw a dagger at her. Without thinking about it, Emma froze it in mid-air.

“Sorceress!” the guard shouted, aiming his halberd directly at Emma’s heart.

“No, I’m not--” Emma started. She didn’t get much farther before purple smoke swirled around her, and she disappeared.

OOooOOooOOooOO

Regina stared at her father’s tomb. She couldn’t believe Cora had treated him so well as to bury him properly, but she was staring the evidence right in the face. That was just like her mother – take everything from her and expect Regina to go along with everything she wanted. First it was Daniel, then she made her marry King Leopold where she had to look that girl in the face every single day, and now it was her father, the one person she had left that she loved.

“I have your tea, your majesty,” a small voice said from her elbow.

Regina glanced down at the tiny boy holding a tea tray. He was a sweet child and Regina hated to see him in Cora’s clutches in any way, even if he was just a kitchen boy. That was still far too close to Cora for any child.

“Thank you, Roland,” Regina said. “Do you know where your parents are?”

“My momma’s gone,” Roland said, hanging his head. “I don’t know where my papa is.”

Regina wanted to comfort him, but was interrupted by Cora appearing in the room.

“Regina, we have a problem,” she said.

“What is it?” Regina asked. Her voice came out harsh and grating.

“An old friend of ours has the girl,” Cora said, her lips thinning.

“Which old friend?” Regina asked.

“Rumpelstiltskin,” Cora replied. “The pirate failed us. We’ll have to break her out.”

“We can’t just march into the Dark One’s castle and steal someone he’s holding,” Regina said. “That’s suicide.”

Cora smiled. “Maybe, but think how much she’ll trust us if we do.”

OOooOOooOOooOO

“Have you ever broken into this castle before, mate?” Killian asked while he and Robin stood outside the Evil Queen’s castle. They were well hidden in the trees, waiting for nightfall. All Killian had to do was find Cora, get his heart back, and get out and then he was free to do whatever he wished. He could pursue his revenge without worrying about Cora trying to kill him or control him.

“Once before the sleeping curse,” Robin replied. “The queen’s quarters are in the central keep and there’s a door through the kitchens that opens onto the moat.”

“Perfect, so all we need is a boat,” Killian said.

“I think that’s your job, Captain,” Robin replied. Killian agreed and left the outlaw alone so he could go find an appropriate vessel for getting across the moat. It didn’t take too long and then he was back, dinghy in tow. Robin got them into the kitchens easily enough, but before they could make it very far down the hall, a silver tray clattered to the floor.

“Papa?” a small voice asked as the two men turned around. A small boy no older than five was staring at them with huge dark eyes.

“Roland?” Robin asked, dropping to the child’s height immediately and scooping the lad into a hug. Killian sighed.

“Go,” he said, gesturing back to the kitchens.

Robin straightened up with Roland tucked under his arm. “A promise is a promise,” he said. “I have a code.”

“Get your son out of here, mate,” Killian said. “I can manage by myself.”

Before he could do more than shoo Robin and Roland back towards the kitchen again, a sharp pain struck him. Killian tried to breathe, but it just made the pain in his chest worse. It was as though someone had reached into his chest and taken hold of his heart and started squeezing.

“Cora,” he managed to choke out, drawing his sword as best he was able. The sorceress was standing in the shadows of the hall, smiling calmly at the three of them.

“Now Hook, you wouldn’t be thinking of stealing your heart back, would you?” Cora asked, releasing the pressure on his stolen heart. Killian took a deep breath and resisted the temptation to rub his chest. “After you failed to bring me the princess?”

Robin looked him over in quick analysis. Killian couldn’t imagine what he found, but Robin didn’t go anywhere either.

“And you,” Cora said, turning her attention to Robin. Little Roland was hiding his face in his father’s shoulder. “Why are you trying to steal my best kitchen boy?”

“He’s not your kitchen boy, he’s my son,” Robin said, shielding Roland’s head from Cora’s sight. Killian admired his instinct for protectiveness over self-preservation. It wasn’t a trait he shared.

“And who might you be then?” Cora asked, slipping Killian’s heart back into her pocket.

“Robin of Locksley,” Robin said, holding his head high. “You might know me better as Robin--”

“Robin Hood,” Cora interrupted. “You’ve got a tattoo just there, haven’t you?”

She pointed at her forearm and Killian saw Robin shift uncomfortably.

“A lion rampant on a plain?” Cora continued. “How delightful.”

She waved her hand and Robin vanished in a swirl of purple smoke. Killian cringed when the boy started crying over his lost father.

“Oh he’s not dead, my dear sweet child,” Cora said, stooping to pet Roland’s hair. “He’s just resting somewhere. Why don’t you run to the kitchen and grab some chocolate?”

Roland stared at her and for a moment, Killian thought the boy was going to challenge the old sorceress. Killian was about to nudge him with his foot to make him run along before he had to witness whatever fate Cora had in store for him, but fortunately, the boy ran into the kitchen quickly.

“As for you, pirate,” Cora said, the sweet smile she’d given Roland twisting into an evil sneer. “You failed me. I think it’s time you did some soul searching, don’t you?”

Killian didn’t have time to ask what she meant before with a flick of her wrist, he vanished into purple smoke.

OOooOOooOOooOO

The Dark One’s castle was unpleasant at best. Granted, Emma had only seen the dungeons, but they weren’t cheery. Will and Mulan were locked in adjacent cells, and they’d been down there for days without the Dark One coming to visit. There was a woman who brought their food, but that was it.

“I suppose he’s going to leave us down here to rot until we’ve turned to bones, yeah?” Will suggested, taking a swig from his flask. Emma and Mulan glared at him. “Because I think we might be right fucked.”

“You know for a Merry Man, you’re not very merry,” Emma snapped.

“For a princess you’re sort of a sorceress who runs around in trousers with pirates,” Will retorted.

“I don’t ‘run around’ with pirates,” Emma said. “Hook got me out of King George’s hold. The last time I met him he tried to ransom me back to my own father, so no, I do not ‘run around’ with men with better taste in eyeliner than morals.”

“Well you did something to get the Dark One interested in you,” Will said.

“Would you both shut up?” Mulan asked.

Emma huffed and Will huffed and they fell back against the walls of their respective cells. Any other bickering was interrupted by the young woman who brought them their food. She was pretty, with lovely, well-kept chestnut hair and nice brown eyes, but she was dressed like some kind of servant. Emma didn’t think the Dark One was the sort to keep servants, let alone keep ones that would bring aid and comfort to prisoners.

“Thank you,” Emma said as she placed a flagon of water in Emma’s cell, along with a loaf of bread.

“I’m sorry it’s not more,” the woman said. “I can only bring what I steal from the kitchen.”

“Do you know what he wants with us?” Emma asked.

“He’s looking for his son,” the woman replied. She met Emma’s eyes for a second and then lowered them quickly. She handed Mulan and Will their portions of food and ran out of the dungeons just as quickly as she’d come in.

“What the bloody fuck are we supposed to know about the Dark One’s son?” Will asked.

“I didn’t even know he had one,” Mulan replied. They turned to look at Emma, who flushed.

“I did,” Emma admitted. “But I haven’t seen him in two years or so.”

“What happened two years ago?” Mulan asked.

Emma took a drink of her water and a bite of her bread rather than answer. The Dark One’s cells were enchanted so that she couldn’t get out of them with magic, because of course they were.

“I kind of…I met him when I tried to run away from home,” Emma explained. “I think the Dark One must think I’m still in contact with him, which I’m not.”

There was silence from the other cells.

“You met the Dark One’s son?” Will asked.

“You tried to run away?” Mulan asked.

Emma shrugged. It seemed so long ago, trying to run away. So much had happened since then, what with Henry being born and enfolded into Leo’s birth, which made him third in line for the throne rather than second as he should’ve been, and then going to Arendelle and learning how to control her magic, not to mention being kidnapped by King George. All in all, it had been so long since she’d set foot in her parents’ palace that she could barely remember why she’d wanted to run in the first place.

“Seating arrangements,” Emma said finally. “And the silverware you choose, not to mention the china patterns. All of them are political when you’re running a kingdom. I wanted to – I don’t even remember anymore. I wanted to be a knight in armour like my dad, I guess, but I couldn’t because I was a princess not a prince. I don’t know. It sounds stupid now.”

“You know I stole my dad’s armour and joined the army and pretended to be a man,” Mulan said.

Emma had not been aware, but she nodded in acknowledgement of Mulan’s statement. She’d known about joining the army, but Emma had thought she’d done it as herself.

“And now I can’t be either because I’m dead and a magic user,” Emma finished.

“So how well did you know the Dark One’s son?” Will asked after a long silence had gone by.

“Not well enough to know who he was until my dad was taking me home,” Emma replied. “Which isn’t going to help us find him.”

The Dark One let them stew in the dungeons for a few more days. Emma was pretty sure his intention was to starve them out, make them so desperate for food that he could waft a roast rat in front of them and they’d stab each other for the opportunity to tell him anything he could ever want to know. That intention was ruined by the young woman, who they learned was named Marian. Marian had been kidnapped by the Dark One out of the Evil Queen’s kingdom a few years before the sleeping curse was cast over the land. The Evil Queen had taken the Dark One’s former house servant hostage and the Dark One had retaliated by seizing Marian out of the Queen’s dungeons before the Queen could execute her publicly. Over the few days they were there, Marian explained that she had a son back in their kingdom and a husband who thought she was dead. The Dark One had told her as much.

“Who’s your husband? Maybe we know him,” Mulan suggested after they’d been there four days.

“Probably,” Marian said. “His name’s Robin.”

Emma, Will, and Mulan stared at her.

“You’re Marian Locksley?” Will asked. He sized her up quickly. “Bloody hell, I had to talk the man off a ledge and you were alive the whole time?”

“You’re Merry Men?” Marian asked. “All three of you?”

“Just me and Will,” Mulan said. Emma forced herself not to feel left out, because even though she’d been with Mulan for almost a month and Will for three weeks, she wasn’t officially part of their band. “I joined about six months before the sleeping curse.”

“And I turned up here about a week after you died,” Will said. “Or didn’t die, or were kidnapped, or whatever.”

“And Roland? He’s okay?” Marian asked, reaching for the bars of the cells like she could hold her son again if she could get a hold of Will and Mulan. Emma thought of Henry, growing up in her parents’ castle believing they were his, and that he’d once possessed an older sister who he couldn’t remember meeting, who’d died when he was a year old.

“Erm…sort of,” Will said, scratching the back of his head. “We – we think so.”

For a thief, Emma was pretty sure Will was the worst liar she’d ever met.

“We don’t know where he is,” Mulan said. “When we woke up from the sleeping curse, he’d disappeared.”

Marian’s eyes widened in obvious desperation. “I’m so sorry, but I have to go. I have to find my son.”

“Wait, you know how to get out of here and you’ve stayed here for the past twenty-four years?” Will demanded.

“It’s taken me twenty-three to figure it out,” Marian said. She grimaced at them in apology. “I’m sorry.”

Before they could ask what exactly she was sorry for, she threw something at her feet, and in a puff of blue smoke, she turned to a nightingale. The bird flapped it’s wings in the air and flew straight out the prison window.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” Mulan demanded, grabbing the bars of her cell and staring at the window through which Marian had just flown away.

In frustration, Emma threw a fireball at the cell door. It bounced off the magical shield and exploded into a shower of sparks on the back wall. Mulan and Will eyed her nervously, and slowly the three of them dropped back to their seats.

Two days later, Emma was starting to feel the hunger. She had no idea how well Marian had succeeded in her plan to get her son back, but if she found him, then she’d also probably find Robin. Emma had to hope that Marian would tell Robin about his two Merry Men locked up, along with the interloper Emma Swan, and then hopefully Robin would come for them. That, or he’d send Hook after them like he’d done when King George kidnapped Mulan. Although, when Emma thought about it, having Hook come try to break them out of the Dark One’s castle wouldn’t necessarily go well. From what she remembered, Hook had mentioned something about the Dark One having his hand.

On day three after Marian’s departure, the Dark One himself strolled into the dungeon with a casual ease. He completely ignored Mulan and Will and instead focused his intentions entirely on Emma.

“A certain pirate told me you know my son,” the Dark One said, grinning at Emma. “If you tell me where he is, I’ll let you go.”

“I don’t know where he is,” Emma said.

“You can do better than that, dearie,” Rumple said. He waved a hand and a full roast dinner appeared on a plate in his hand. Emma heard her stomach rumble and felt her mouth start to water. Will’s stomach growled so loudly she could hear it two cells away. “Tell me what you know and I’ll hand this over.”

“I haven’t seen him in two years,” Emma said, swallowing and trying not to breathe. “He doesn’t want anything to do with me.”

“And why’s that?” Rumple asked, leaning closer to the cell. He was almost close enough that Emma could reach through the bars and grab the plate from him. Almost, but not quite.

“Because I can do magic,” Emma said, swallowing again and not licking her cracked and dry lips. “He hates magic. He wouldn’t even spin straw into gold to get out of debt.”

Something flickered in the Dark One’s reptilian eyes. Emma couldn’t be sure what it was, but she was pretty sure it was an acknowledgement of the fact Emma was telling the truth.

“He doesn’t want you,” Rumpelstiltskin said slowly, lowering the plate. His face contorted suddenly into a hideous mask of rage and he hurled the plate at the far wall where it shattered, sending all the perfectly good food to the floor. Rats swarmed out of the walls to make off with the first food the prisoners had seen in days.

While Rumpelstiltskin paced up and down the centre of the jail cursing, Emma thought she could hear a commotion in the upper levels of the castle. Whatever it was, the Dark One didn’t hear, because he wrenched open Will’s cell door and dragged him out. With a flick of his hand, Will’s hands were bound and he was suspended from the ceiling. Mulan and Emma shouted at him as best they could, hurling the pebbles they found in their cells at him, but nothing stopped the Dark One from conjuring a riding crop and rending the back of Will’s shirt with another flick of his hand. The sound of the first blow echoed through the dungeon before it was blocked out by Will’s shout of pain. In the successive blows, as blood started to drip to the dungeon floor, some of the less fortunate rats who had missed out on the roast dinner swarmed to the fallen blood and started lapping it up.

Before Emma or Mulan could dissuade the Dark One from his bloodlust, the dungeon door burst open and he was blasted away with a burst of magic. Emma tried to figure out who the newcomer was as the cell doors opened. Mulan rushed to Will to try and help him down, but the new magic user waved her hand and Will fell from the ceiling into Mulan’s arms.

“We should go,” the woman said, waving her hand at Rumpelstiltskin. With a puff of purple smoke, he disappeared and rematerialized in Emma’s cell, which shut and locked behind him. She saw the glare of magic seal it and his powers.

“Who are you?” Emma asked, helping Mulan with Will and dragging him out of the dungeon.

“A friend,” the woman said. She had pitch black hair that tumbled over her shoulders and sharp brown eyes. Emma thought she looked familiar but she couldn’t place her.

“Sorry lady, I don’t make a lot of friends,” Emma said, grabbing a sword from a suit of armour.

“You can use that later,” the woman said, flicking her hand. The sword returned to the suit of armour. With another wave of her arm, the four of them disappeared in a cloud of purple smoke. When Emma landed, Will and Mulan were gone.

“Where did you send them?” Emma demanded, searching around for a weapon. She was in a castle, but it wasn’t the Dark One’s. Instead it was finely decorated in blacks and reds and the occasional burst of white that stood out like blood on snow. There were no weapons to be had, and Emma didn’t like her chances if it came to a magic fight.

“They’re safe,” the woman promised. “They had somewhere to go, people missing them, like the rest of their Merry Men.”

Emma blinked at the unspoken element of the woman’s statement. Will and Mulan had somewhere to go and people who missed them. Emma did not.

“Who are you?” Emma asked.

The woman sighed. “My name is Regina.”

OOooOOooOOooOO

Regina could see Emma process the name. The girl seemed to be trying to figure out if she was really _that_ Regina or if she was another magic using woman who happened to have the bad luck to share a name with the Evil Queen who’d spent the past thirty-odd years trying to get vengeance on her mother.

“Regina like--” Emma started, holding her hands up like she meant to use magic against her. Regina sighed. She had no faith in her mother’s plan, but if the girl was stupid enough to think a year of magical training with an ice witch in the north was enough to make her equal to Regina’s power, she had even less potential than Regina thought.

“Yes _that_ Regina,” she said, using magic to change into her preferred clothes. At her mother’s suggestion, she’d dressed more like Snow to break Emma out of Rumple’s prison. She felt better once her hair was up and her clothes had skirts. “But don’t worry. I’m not going to hurt you.”

“Yeah sure,” Emma replied, continuing to hold her hands up. “You cursed my parents’ wedding but you’re not going to hurt me.”

“You’ll notice that of the three of us, _I_ was the one to spend the past twenty years under a curse, not your parents,” Regina said. She rang a bell and right on cue, Roland brought in the tea tray. It was the first time Regina had seen the child without Cora hovering over him in several weeks. He looked desperately like he wanted to tell her something, but when he glanced at Emma and her defensive magical hands, his eyes widened and he hid behind Regina’s skirts.

“Would you lower your hands? You’re scaring the boy,” Regina said, resting a hand on Roland’s head. Despite herself, she was fond of the boy.

Emma glanced from Regina down to Roland and back. Slowly, she lowered her hands.

“Where are my friends?” Emma asked.

“I told you, they’re safe,” Regina said. They were, after a fashion. They were in one of the tower prisons rather than the dungeon. Regina hated dungeons. They were disgusting, horrible places only suited for those about to be executed. If she wanted to go through with her mother’s absurd plan and get Emma to trust her, then dungeons were not the place for the two Merry Men. Instead, she’d put them with the serving girl she’d taken from the Dark One years ago.

“Why did you come break us out?” Emma asked, glancing at the tea Regina poured and refusing to take a cup. Regina offered her one of the biscuits and she could see the girl’s will start to crumble. To prove her best intentions, Regina took one herself and bit into it, then offered another to Roland. At the sight of the boy chewing on the biscuit, Emma finally took one and practically swallowed it whole.

“I came and broke you out because if there’s one person I can’t stand seeing successful more than your parents it’s--” _my mother_ , the voice in her head said. Regina brushed it aside. “It’s Rumpelstiltskin.”

Emma stared at her, but didn’t stop eating the cookies at a concerning pace. “And you’re helping me even though I’m my parents’ daughter?”

Regina sat down and let Roland retreat to the kitchen with the instruction to bring some proper food. “Everything that happened between us happened a very long time ago. Is there anything I could do to gain your – I suppose it would be too much to ask for your trust, but perhaps your belief that I don’t mean you any ill-will?”

Emma considered. “My parents think I’m dead,” she said. “Let me go tell them I’m alive.”

Regina tried not to show her shock. News of the princess’s death hadn’t spread as far south as her kingdom yet.

“You’d make it a day’s ride away before you collapsed from starvation, and then you’d actually die,” Regina said. “At least wait a few days until you get your strength back.”

“And then you’ll let me go?” Emma asked.

Regina nodded. “I have no intention of holding you here against your will.”

_That’s my mother_ , the voice added.

“Maybe I could send a messenger to them?” Emma suggested.

“Of course,” Regina said. “I can send someone right away.”

Emma considered her but was prevented from saying anything by a different serving person bringing them a miniature feast. Emma fell upon the food with no suspicion, which Regina counted as progress. She was almost detached enough that she could watch her mother’s plan fall apart from the side-lines as though she was observing a particularly dull horse race. But sooner or later, she would have to acknowledge the fact she was technically one of the jockeys.

“I want to pick the messenger,” Emma said.

“Sure,” Regina said. “I can call up the guards if you’d like.”

Emma shook her head. “Someone from the kingdom. One of the Merry Men.”

Regina grimaced. She didn’t want to deal with the bandits. Their leader was enough of a problem, setting up heists and pilfering her tax money. She supposed they’d all been caught up in her mother’s sleeping curse, rather than just the two Emma had been with.

“Fine,” she said. “I’ll see about collecting one of your Merry Men and then you can send him with a message to the palace. I’m sure your parents will come for you immediately, cannons blazing, I’d imagine.”

“Yeah,” Emma agreed, but she looked down at her plate. Regina noticed there wasn’t much conviction in her voice.

Regina felt herself open her mouth, and start to speak. “My mother--” she started. She stopped herself as quickly as she’d begun, because Cora herself walked into the room at that moment.

“Ah, I see our guest is enjoying the benefit of being in a castle that has proper manners,” Cora said, smiling broadly at Emma and inviting herself to one of the seats. “Oh my dear, how that man mistreated you.”

Emma eyed her warily and with a wave of Cora’s hand, the grime disappeared from Emma’s skin and hair and her clothes were replaced with a lovely blue dress. Regina noted with some distaste that it was one of her own from before.

“Thanks,” Emma said, although her voice was hard like she harboured some (well placed, in Regina’s opinion) suspicions.

“Mother, we have need of one of the Merry Men,” Regina said. “The princess’s family has come to the mistaken impression that she’s dead and we’d like to rectify that situation.”

“We?” Cora repeated, turning her smile to Regina. Regina noted that it didn’t reach her eyes. “Of course. I’ll see to it immediately. I assume you’d like to speak to the man yourself?”

“That would be great,” Emma said.

“Of course,” Cora said, standing again. “I happen to know where they’re camped. It shouldn’t take too long.”

She smiled again and disappeared into a cloud of red smoke.

Emma turned to look at Regina again, who tried her hardest not to look unsettled. “You were saying about your mother?”

“She’s very good at making the things she wants become reality,” Regina said, picking her words carefully. She didn’t add that this always came at the expense of others.

Cora returned with a Merry Man within the hour and Emma sent the poor, traumatized man off to the palace with a written note from her and a clear spoken message as well. Regina didn’t blame her. If she were trying to escape from her mother – well, the first time she’d tried to do that, the man she loved died, then the second time she’d pushed her into Wonderland only to have that fail because Cora simply became the queen there, and the third time, she’d placed her faith in the wrong pirate. Princess Emma didn’t stand much of a chance against Cora’s wiling and conniving in Regina’s opinion.

“You’re welcome to stay in this room as long as you like,” Regina said, showing Emma to one of the nicer bedrooms in the castle. Emma sat cautiously on the side of the bed. “When you get home, if you would tell your parents my kingdom is awake and available for trade opportunities, I would appreciate it. We have excellent import-export capabilities I’m sure they’d love to take advantage of.”

“You really think they’ll trade with you?” Emma asked.

Regina lifted her shoulders in the closest approximation to a shrug she’d come since her mother had shamed the gesture out of her. “I think your parents have an unnerving capacity to believe people can change for the better, and I’d rather like to start this new life from a better place than the last one before the sleeping curse.”

Emma raised her eyebrow. “Do you really want to trade with them?”

Regina smiled. “I’ll comfort myself with the knowledge I haven’t aged a day, and I’m sure your mother has,” she said. “At least I still have my beauty.”

She almost thought the corner of Emma’s mouth twitched.

“I’m still sleeping with a dagger under my pillow,” Emma said, showing the knife.

Regina nodded, and felt herself smile.  “I’d recommend it.”

OOooOOooOOooOO

Alan Adale rode as fast as he could out of the Evil Queen’s kingdom. He couldn’t believe that the girl he’d met a few weeks ago as Emma Swan was actually the princess, but he had liked her when she sat around their campfire and joked with him and Will and Mulan and that pirate, Hook. In a moment of uncomfortable clarity, he remembered making an incredibly crude joke in front of her that had been bad enough for Friar Tuck to bless his soul for surely it was only by the grace of God he would be forgiven for it. He tried not to dwell on that, because the princess had given him the incredibly important task of carrying a message to her parents to let them know their daughter was still alive.

As he came to the edge of the forest, there was a puff of red smoke and his horse reared, throwing him off. Alan sprawled in the dirt as the Evil Queen’s mother walked over to him. She smiled down at him while she plucked the message out of his bag. It dissolved into flames in her hands. Alan started to shout at her, but his voice was suddenly gone.

“Don’t be stupid,” Cora said. “I can’t have you delivering that message. You’ll ruin my plans.”

Alan was vaguely aware that something was wrong with his feet, but he couldn’t figure out what. As the problem spread to his legs, he looked down and noticed they’d taken the shape of a fallen tree trunk. The sensation spread up his torso and chest, spreading his arms wide into branches. The transformation left his eyes capable of sight, but he was entirely unable to move or speak or shout for help. Cora was hidden for a moment by red smoke, and when she emerged, she didn’t look like herself. Alan watched her walk away, only to return minutes later with a lumberjack. Alan had barely felt his transformation into a tree. He felt the axe.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've returned from the dead. I'm sorry. To those wondering, Marian was placed under a similar aging spell as Hook, and yes, it is actually Marian not *spoilers from the end of season 4 redacted*. In this particular universe, Will and Mulan never met Marian before this chapter, since Will didn't meet her when he ran into Robin in Oz, and in this particular continuity, he joined the Merry Men after Marian's death.


	6. An Apple a Day

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi there everyone. Sorry for the delays in posting, and the delays yet to come. My life has odd pockets of being very busy and then having literally nothing to do. Anyway, one announcement: information about my fics/questions/the fics themselves can all be found now at mouse-and-stupid-productions.tumblr.com if you'd like to come ask me why I'm so terrible about updating. Anyway, thank you so much for reading!

There was something wrong. Emma knew that much. It wasn’t just that the Evil Queen Regina had saved her from Rumpelstiltskin or that she’d fed her from her own stores and hadn’t tried to kill her or leverage her over her parents in order to extort their unconditional surrender or something. It was that the Merry Man she’d sent to tell her parents she was still alive had been gone for three weeks, much longer than it took to get to the palace in the north, and there was no word.

“I know as much as you do,” Regina assured her while they sat at the breakfast table. Emma found it hard to believe she was sitting at a breakfast table with the same woman who’d once put her mother under a sleeping curse, but there she was, the same way she’d been for the past three weeks. She was strong enough now to leave on her own volition, and Regina seemed ready to encourage her to do so, but the last time she’d tried, she’d come down with a horrible flu and had been confined to bed until the fever broke. Cora had sat by her bedside until it passed, refreshing the washcloths doused in cold water and bringing her broth. Emma wasn’t quite ready to say that Cora had poisoned her to make her sick enough that she couldn’t leave, but the way Regina glared at her mother when she thought no one was looking made her pretty sure it was the case.

“Even if they want to give me up as a sacrifice to appease the Evil Queen, they should at least let me know,” Emma said, picking at her poached eggs. She missed the breakfasts she’d had in Arendelle with Elsa and Anna, and Kai and Gerda, and the one breakfast she’d shared with the Merry Men.

“You’re right,” Regina said. “It’s not like Snow and Charming to leave anyone uncertain of their fate. The time they tried to execute me, they were very clear about it.”

Emma frowned. Her parents had never mentioned having Regina in custody long enough to try and execute her. Her confusion must have shown on her face, because Regina smiled into her goblet of a wonderful beverage her kingdom imported from the southern continents. Regina called it “coffee” and Emma was pretty sure it was her favourite drink, maybe even more so than whiskey.

“They never told you that, did they?” she asked. Emma shook her head. “I bet they never told you why I hate them either.”

Emma searched her memory for some long-lost explanation, but she came up blank.

“I tried to run away from home,” Regina said. “To be with the man I loved.”

Emma started. She didn’t think she loved Neal, but she could definitely sympathise.

“I told your mother about it,” Regina said. “And she told my mother, and she ripped his heart out and crushed it in front of me.”

Emma felt her own heart constrict in her chest. She’d never expected to feel sympathy for Regina of all people, but she thought she might.

“Your mother was terrible at keeping secrets when she was a child,” Regina said. “If she’d just kept her mouth shut, Daniel and I would be somewhere far away.”

Emma frowned at her. “It sounds to me like _your_ mother was the one who actually killed him.”

Regina grimaced. “My mother can’t be helped,” Regina said. “She’s irredeemable and her actions were practically expected. It was your mother’s intervention that ruined our escape.”

Emma almost asked why Regina let her mother wander around in her life if the woman was capable of such things, but she stopped herself. She had no right to criticise anyone’s relationship with their mother, not only because her relationship with her own mother was strained, but because she herself was a terrible one.

“Your highness?” one of the servants asked, approaching the table. For a minute, Emma thought he was talking to Regina, then he stared at her imploringly.

“Yes?” Emma asked.

“We – we received word,” he said, addressing his toes. “A-Alan Adale was seen leaving the King and Queen’s palace four days ago.”

“So he told them?” Regina asked. The servant nodded. Emma felt a little relieved. Cora’s meddling couldn’t directly affect her parents. They might not have the necessary magic, but Emma was pretty sure they were more powerful than her.

“This was posted in the village this morning,” the servant said, handing them a sheet of paper. Emma scanned it quickly and felt her stomach plummet through her body.

“Excuse me,” she said, barely managing to get the words out before she ran out of the room. She wasn’t sure where she was going, and the castle was confusing enough that it was easy to get lost. She felt herself start to cry as she stumbled into a higher level of the dungeons. In her three week stay at the castle, she’d come to know that Regina only used dungeons for prisoners she intended to execute, and she wasn’t planning any public events at the moment, so she figured it would be empty. Emma dropped to the floor and leaned against one of the cells, trying to dry her tears. When they splashed onto the stone floors, they swelled, creating small puddles. She seriously needed to get a better handle on her magic.

“Cheer up, Swan, you could be locked in here,” a familiar voice said from behind her.

Emma sniffed and turned to discover Hook leaning against the wall of the cell. He had one knee popped up with his good hand resting on it, his other leg stretched out in front of him. He was a little worse for the wear than he had been when Emma had last seen him, but then she remembered that had been almost two months ago at the Merry Men’s camp the day she left.

“Hook?” she asked. “Regina’s going to execute you?”

“I hope not,” he said. “It’d be a waste of someone so dashingly handsome.”

Emma frowned at him and he sighed, resting his head against the wall with his eyes closed.

“If you want the truth, love, I don’t think Regina knows I’m in here,” he said. “Cora’s the one who locked me up.”

“When you tried to steal back whatever it was she took from you, right?” Emma asked.

“Aye,” Hook agreed, running his hand over his heavily stubbled jaw. Emma wondered if whatever magic kept him from aging also kept his hair from growing at a standard rate.

“You never told me what she took,” Emma said.

Hook’s mouth curved upwards in a humourless smile, but he didn’t open his eyes. “If you really want to know, Swan, she hired me to find you for her and bring you here and she stole my heart as insurance and promised to help me kill the Crocodile, but I decided to deal with the Crocodile myself and ask Robin Hood to get my heart back since he was the best thief around, and that all went to hell and you’re here anyway.”

Emma considered the information that Cora had actually hired someone to find her. She’d taken Hook’s heart, sure, but Emma was pretty sure she or Regina – if she felt inclined to help – would be easily capable of getting it back before any damage could be done. Overall, nothing truly horrible had happened, and Hook was fine, even if he was imprisoned.

“At least Cora wants me,” Emma said, turning away from him and leaning back against the cell wall. She imagined that Hook had opened his eyes and was staring at the back of her head in concern.

“That’s not a good thing, Swan,” he said.

“Well it’s nice to know that someone does,” Emma said, feeling the salt water start to run down her face again. She brushed it away angrily.

“What happened, Swan?” Hook asked.

Emma sniffed and tried to will the crying to stop with magic. It didn’t work.

“I told you I was shipwrecked,” she said. “Which was how King George and then you found me, except someone told my parents I died in the shipwreck.”

“And they believed that even when the two Merry Men, Mulan and the twitchy one, Scarlet, brought you back to their palace?” Hook asked.

“No,” Emma said. “We never made it. And then I sent another Merry Man to go tell them, and he did, and then this was in the village this morning.”

She shoved the paper through the bars of Hook’s cell and heard leather on stone while he moved forward to get it.

“By order of the High King and Queen, the entire kingdom of the Enchanted Forest is to be in mourning for the tragic loss of Princess Emma at sea in the month of November,” Hook read. She heard him lower the notice. “I’m not sure I understand.”

“Yeah, well, I do,” Emma said, reaching through the bars of the cell and taking the notice back. She took a shaky breath. “I was the screw up princess. Now they’ve got a prince to take over the throne because it’s more convenient for everyone if I’m dead.”

“Two princes, technically, and running away once doesn’t make you a screw-up,” Hook said.

Emma laughed, intending it to be bitter, but it transitioned halfway through into a sob. “They’ve got one prince, and a grandson they’re pretending is their son.”

Hook was silent while he did the math he needed to do.

“Baelfire?” he asked. Emma nodded. “So you ran away once and got pregnant with the Dark One’s grandson. They’re still your parents, right?”

“There’s also this,” Emma said, holding her hands up and letting fire pool in her palms. She felt Hook take a step back. “And saying they’re my parents is awfully hollow coming from you. I’ve met your father, remember?”

Hook didn’t have a rebuttal to that, and Emma sniffed again, letting the fire fade away from her hands.

“What are you going to do then?” Hook asked. “Aside from break your favourite dashing pirate companion out of jail.”

Emma snorted and waved her hand. The lock on Hook’s jail cell shattered. She expected him to leave immediately, but he dithered, shifting his weight on either foot and then, to her shock, he sat down next to her.

“What are you going to do?” Hook asked.

“I don’t know,” Emma said, wrapping her arms around her knees. Henry was going to be two in May, only four months away. He was going to grow up thinking Leo was his twin brother, inexplicably the less-preferred child with no way of ever figuring out why. The people who knew – Doc, Red – would be banned from sharing the knowledge that the elder sister his parents never talked about was really his mother. If he ever did find out, all he would really know about her were the choices she made. She made the choice to run away and get pregnant in the first place, then she made the choice to let him believe she was his sister, then she made the choice to leave for Arendelle, and as far as he ever knew, that would be the last choice she ever made.

“I offered you passage on a ship once,” Hook said. “I’d be willing to extend the offer again.”

“And go where?” Emma asked, resting her forehead against her knees.

“Back to the palace, maybe,” Hook suggested. “Maybe they didn’t get the message.”

Emma thought he sounded unconvinced with his own argument. “Yeah, the last time I tried that, the guard didn’t recognise me, realised I was a magic user, accused me of being one of the Evil Queen’s tricks, and then I got kidnapped by Rumpelstiltskin.”

“So don’t go home,” Hook said. “Use the occasion of your death to forge a new identity for yourself. Whatever you want to be. Just…don’t stay here. Cora’s not to be trifled with.”

“You don’t think you’re a little biased?” Emma asked, raising her eyebrow at him. He pursed his lips like he was thinking about it.

Anything he might want to say was interrupted by Regina’s footsteps echoing off the walls of the dungeon. She looked slightly windswept like she’d been searching the whole castle and she patted her hair back into place while she looked down at Emma’s tearstained face and Hook’s ill-kempt appearance.

“What are you doing here?” she asked him, her voice sharp.

“Your mother locked me up,” Hook said. “I’ve been here about six weeks.”

Regina grimaced at him like he was something foul she had to clean up and turned her attention to Emma. “What was on that notice?”

“My parents confirmed my death,” Emma explained, handing her the paper. She watched Regina’s mouth move as she read the words, and then her head tilted sideways in obvious confusion.

“They – _your parents_ took the news you were alive and ignored it?” Regina asked, looking from the notice to Emma and back.

“Why wouldn’t they?” Emma asked. “It’s a perfect opportunity to start over.”

“Even my mother wouldn’t go so far as to abandon a child in favour of a fresh start,” Regina said, sounding disturbed.

“I suppose she also wouldn’t sell her soul for the devil in exchange for magical powers?” Hook suggested.

Regina considered. “No, she did that,” she said. Hook nodded and Regina sighed before she picked Emma up by the elbows and dusted the dungeon off her. “Well whatever you do, you can’t stay in the dungeon.”

“You mean I can stay here?” Emma asked. At the very least, Regina had been hospitable. Apparently that was more than her parents were good for.

“You’re a young girl, you can’t go running off into the wilderness alone, especially when your parents have given you up for dead and there’s no one who would come after you,” Regina said. “Terrible things happen to girls like that.”

“I know,” Emma muttered. If Regina heard her, she didn’t say anything.

“I honestly can’t believe your parents did that,” Regina said. “I didn’t think they had it in them.”

Emma swallowed and tried not to start crying again. She could vividly remember the disappointment in her mother’s eyes when she told her she was pregnant. She could remember how quickly Snow had a plan ready to send her off with the fairies as soon as her magic caused problems in the palace. She’d been planning to send her off. She’d already planned it with the fairies well before she brought it up.

“But you did, didn’t you?” Regina asked, staring at Emma curiously.

Emma sniffed and nodded once.

“You can stay here as long as you’d like,” Regina said.

Emma nodded again and tried to thank her, but her voice didn’t work properly. The tears that insisted on falling kept making giant puddles on the floor.

“Will you teach me to work magic?” she asked. “Properly?”

“Yes,” Regina said, and they walked out of the dungeon together.

OOooOOooOOooOO

Killian stared after Emma and Regina while they walked out of the dungeon. He could leave. Regina wouldn’t care or notice that he was gone, but then he’d be right back where he started. The Crocodile would be alive, and Cora would have his heart. Plus there was the problem of Robin being locked up somewhere else in the castle, and Robin’s son being used as a serving boy. And now Cora had Emma for whatever nefarious purpose she wanted with her. Killian honestly couldn’t say whether he hated to see Emma in Cora’s or Rumpelstiltskin’s clutches more. Well, no, it was definitely worse if she was in the Crocodile’s grasp, but he’d never thought he’d see Emma cry or be particularly vulnerable, aside from Baelfire abandoning her – apparently while she was pregnant, but that train of thought just sent an unbidden enquiry about what Emma looked like naked through his head, and that was counterproductive.

He had three options really. Option one was to leave and take his chances with Cora killing him remotely by squishing his heart. The advantages to that plan were limited to the fact it might give him time to kill the Crocodile. Option two was to stay long enough to free Robin and his son and attempt to steal his heart back and/or convince Emma to leave. That option most likely ended in his death, with a very low chance of any sort of success. Option three was to find a way to stay – safely and not in a dungeon – so that he could keep an eye on Emma. It was the least practical option, with very little opportunity to kill the Crocodile, but there was potential to get Robin and Roland out at some point, if not immediately, and maybe get his heart back.

He stood in the dungeon corridor deliberating for all of ten seconds before running after Emma and Regina.

“You’re still here?” Regina asked, managing to look dismissive without looking at him.

“I thought I might stay for tea,” Killian replied, smiling at the two women.

Regina waved her hand as if to say she didn’t care what he did, and he was no more than an annoying fly. He could work with that.

“I may not be good for killing people like you hired me to do, or for kidnapping princesses like your mother hired me to do, but I’m certain you could find some use for me,” he said.

“We are shy a court jester,” Regina said, still not looking at him. Killian thought he saw Emma start to smile, but it was gone just as soon as it appeared. “But bathe, would you? Being in the dungeon didn’t agree with your leather clothing.”

Killian brushed off her slight against his person and then suddenly a servant was showing him to a room and filling up a tub with fairly warm water. Killian’s main experiences with full body immersion were falling into the ocean, but Regina didn’t exactly have a waterfall that could be used for bathing. He was entirely naked and in the tub when the door opened and Cora strode in.

“If you wanted to get me alone, there are better ways than interrupting a man’s bath,” he said.

“Who let you out of your cell, Captain?” Cora asked. She had a small, evil smile upon her face that Killian did not like the look of.

“Emma,” he said. “The one you want to keep around for some dark purpose or other. Somehow, I don’t think she’d take it very well if you murdered me, what with us being friends and all.”

‘Friend’ was almost certainly a stronger term than Emma would use for their acquaintance, but Killian could hope that Cora wouldn’t be too inquisitive about the label.

“So you’re going to stay in my castle and eat my food and…seduce…my charge?” Cora asked, narrowing her eyes at him.

“No, I’m going to stay in _Regina’s_ castle and eat _Regina’s_ food and seduce _Regina’s_ charge,” Killian replied. Then he realised what he’d said and grumbled to himself. “Not ‘seduce.’ Look out for.”

Cora considered him for a long moment, scanning his face quickly. She reached into a pouch hanging from her skirts and removed his heart. Killian swallowed nervously, wishing he could do at least a little bit of magic so he could overpower her and take it back.

“You will not tell Emma or Regina about the outlaw in the dungeons, nor about the child belonging to him,” Cora instructed, speaking directly against his externalised internal organ. Killian could feel the force of her words rattling around his skull. “If you do, I’ll kill them quickly. And you, but much more slowly. Do we understand each other?”

“Yes,” Killian grudgingly admitted. Well, it wasn’t as though he needed Regina or Emma’s help to get Robin and Roland out of the castle. It was something he was fairly well capable of.

“Good,” Cora said. “Enjoy your bath, Hook.”

She spun on her heel and strode out of the room, tucking his heart back into the pouch at her waist. He was willing to bet she slept with it.

OOooOOooOOooOO

Regina started Emma on small magic. The smallest, simplest magic. Conjuring an apple from nothing. It turned out the girl was good at some things, like heat and fire, but when it came to conjuring, she was useless. Regina only lost her patience once or twice in the first few weeks of their magic training. The problem with Emma learning to do magic was that she was full up to the brim of light magic and Regina had no idea how that worked. It would be easier if Emma was dark, like Cora wanted. Regina wasn’t sure how to turn Emma to dark magic, though. She’d never had a choice, since the magic she wanted was for revenge against her mother, which was dark in purpose and therefore in character.

“No, like this,” Regina said, holding out her hand. In a puff of purple smoke, an apple appeared. Regina took a bite. It was perfectly crisp and tangy the way an apple should be.

Emma frowned at the fruit and closed her eyes to concentrate. Someday, Regina would have to break her of the habit, since closing one’s eyes while trying to cast a spell was usually a recipe for disaster. It took away one of your observation skills and dulled the rest of the senses, which made reaction time slower and in the event one was trying to cast spells in a high pressure circumstance, it would never do to have one’s eyes closed.

Emma’s brow furrowed and scrunched while she tried to conjure the apple. It was taking so long that Regina dropped to her lounge and finished eating her apple. She glanced at the wall clock and then finally, with a forced popping sound and a swirl of white smoke, a green apple appeared in Emma’s hand. She opened her eyes wide and stared at the apple in awe. If she was this excited about a simple conjure, Regina shuddered to think how overjoyed she’d be if she conjured something massive.

“I did it,” she said, holding the green apple like it was something precious. Regina didn’t care for green apples. They were too bitter.

“How’s the quality?” Regina asked.

Emma frowned like she’d never considered it and took a tentative bite. She made a face at the sourness of the apple and Regina smirked.

“Try for a red one next time,” she said. “They taste better.”

“They do?” Emma asked.

Regina raised her eyebrow. “You sound like you’ve never had an apple before.”

When Emma didn’t deny the accusation, Regina stared at her. Then she realised, of course Snow White’s daughter had never had an apple before. Why would she? Her mother had been poisoned by one that Regina herself had provided.

“Here, try this one instead,” Regina said, conjuring a second red apple and tossing it to Emma. Emma caught it and looked at it uncertainly for a moment before she took a bite. As she watched Snow White’s daughter eat an apple given to her by Regina, she realised that perhaps her mother’s plan wasn’t as farfetched as she’d first thought.

OOooOOooOOooOO

Killian had to try to find Robin. He couldn’t tell Regina or Emma about his being there, since Cora had forbidden him on pain of death, but he had to do something. As he searched the castle, he idly wondered what had become of him and how he’d managed to arrive at a point in his life where he was trying to do something nice for someone he barely knew. It was how he’d been before everything, he supposed. Before his father became Davy Jones, before Liam died, before Milah, before he’d spent two centuries in Neverland. He grumbled to himself and went back to searching for Robin.

He wasn’t in any of the dungeons, which was a bit concerning to say the least. Killian puzzled over Cora’s unaccountable knowledge of the man’s tattoo, which seemed to indicate she had use for him. And the fact she’d forbidden Killian to tell Regina and Emma about his presence was a pretty clear indicator that he was alive.

He stopped in the lowest of the dungeons to think. Trying to think like Cora was not a particularly pleasant proposition, and it wasn’t even something he was sure he was capable of. Well, he’d have to think like someone else then, because thinking like himself wasn’t getting him very far. There was the one pirate legend he knew of, back before his father had become Davy Jones. To avoid capture he was the sort of man who’d sail very close to the king’s ships. If _he_ were trying to hide someone, perhaps he’d hide them in the obvious spot. Regina didn’t like dungeons, so maybe Cora had put Robin in the tower prisons Regina tended to use.

Killian started to make his way there when he was waylaid by Emma.

“Where are you going?” she asked. The two months she’d been with the Evil Queen and her even worse mother had actually been good for her. Her skin glowed and he thought he could see a ghost of a smile on her face almost all the time.

“Looking for the view,” Killian said. “I thought I’d try to find the sea.”

“Oh,” Emma said, nodding slowly. She concentrated for a second and a shiny red apple appeared in her hand. She tossed it to him. “It’s a while until dinner and you missed breakfast.”

“Thanks,” Killian said, inspecting the apple.

Emma nodded at him and started to sweep away, her long dark blue dress trailing on the ground. She paused halfway down the corridor.

“Why are you still here?” she asked, turning her head sideways. She didn’t sound accusatory or like she wanted him to leave, but she did sound curious.

“Thought I’d try my hand at staying on land for a while,” Killian said. He shrugged and took a bite of the apple. It was mealy and a little bruised, which he guessed meant her magic wasn’t exactly perfect yet.

Emma considered him, eyes narrowed. The first time he’d met her, and the second time, there had been shadows under her eyes like she hadn’t slept well for a while. They were gone now.

“I can take care of myself, Captain Hook,” she said.

“I’m sure you can, Swan,” he said. He didn’t add that she was mostly lost and had fallen in with a bad crowd that seemed to be growing on her. He didn’t add that he considered himself as part of that bad crowd.

“I suppose I’ll see you at dinner,” she said, turning and retreating down the hall.

Killian nodded even though she couldn’t see him and continued up the tower stairs. Despite its texture, the apple did taste quite good.

The first thing that was wrong with the top of the tower was the lack of guards. He looked around, expecting one of the black guards to come running from a hidden hallway to bother him, but none did. He frowned and unlocked the cell with his hook. Three people stared at him in bewildered shock. None of them were Robin, that much was readily obvious. But he recognised two as the Merry Men sent with Emma to her parents’ castle months ago.

“Hook?” Mulan asked, jumping to her feet and staring at him like he might be some kind of illusion.

“Afternoon,” he said, nodding in her direction and looking at the third person in the cell. She was a lovely young woman with impressively turquoise eyes. After a second of staring, she started to look familiar. “I tried to kill you once.”

“Yes, you did, and it wasn’t that long ago,” she said, staring between his hook – pointed at her – and his face. She had her face set like she was going to take him head on if he attacked.

“It was twenty-odd years ago, love, sorry there was a sleeping curse,” Hook said.

“Twenty years?” the girl – Belle if he remembered correctly – exclaimed. She stared at Will and Mulan like they might have some explanation for her.

“We didn’t know how long it’d been,” Will mumbled, rubbing his ear uncomfortably.

“We were under the same sleeping curse after all,” Mulan said.

“What happened to our yaoguai friend then?” Belle asked, staring at Mulan with big eyes.

“We found his princess, he woke her, apparently they married and they’ve got a son who looks like he’s about our age,” Mulan said, shaking off the strangeness of her statement.

Killian looked between the three of them for some explanation, but none of them offered him one.

“Have the three of you seen Robin?” he asked.

“No,” Will said, letting the women continue their in depth conversation about everything that’d happened to the people they used to know before the sleeping curse. “Is he here? I’ve got to tell him that his wife’s alive.”

“Erm, he is somewhere, but I haven’t been able to find him,” Killian explained. He looked them over again and let his confusion show on his face. “I know why Belle’s here, but what are you two doing here?”

“The Dark One grabbed us when he grabbed Emma,” Mulan explained. “And then when the Evil Queen broke us out, she put the two of us in here with Belle. Is Emma okay?”

Killian considered the question. As unsettling as the answer was considering the circumstances, she most certainly…was.

“Yeah, she’s fine,” Killian said. “The three of you should…I dunno…escape.”

“I’ll help you find Robin,” Will offered.

“Don’t be daft,” Killian scolded. Physically, he was sure he was only four or five years older than him, but every so often, Killian felt the need to use his actual age to scold people like Will for their juvenile notions of good and right. “The Queen of Hearts lives here.”

Will’s expression of fool-hearty bravery didn’t disappear, but it went hollow like the fight had gone out of him.

“You’re not going to try to kill me this time?” Belle asked, lifting her chin in defiance.

“Are you going to go running back to the Dark One to try and save his soul again?” Killian asked.

Belle’s chin lowered while Will and Mulan gaped at her in obvious reproach. Whatever else they’d talked about in their imprisonment, it clearly had not been Belle’s past. Killian rolled his eyes.

“You can all swap stories about poor choices while you’re running far away from here,” he said, ushering them out of the cell.

The three followed him down the hall and through the most roundabout way to the kitchens. Killian was fairly confident he could secret them out of the place if they could make it to the kitchen, and if they weren’t interrupted by Cora, or Regina, or possibly even Emma. To his relief, they reached the kitchen unimpaired and Killian forced them out through the same grating he and Robin had used to break into the castle months before.

“What about Robin?” Will asked.

Killian started to answer but he was interrupted by Mulan.

“What about you?” she asked.

“I’ll find Robin,” he promised. “I was looking for him when I found the three of you.”

They exchanged looks and seemed to take all this as acceptable, because they shimmied down the grating and vanished from sight. Once they were gone, Killian released a breath he hadn’t known he was holding and turned to find himself face to face with Cora.

“Who were you freeing, Captain?” she asked, with that small, obviously dangerous smile on her face. Killian forced himself not to recoil.

“No one you care about,” he said.

“Not the bandit with the lion tattoo?” Cora asked.

“Can’t find him,” Killian replied, moving to brush past her. She put a hand on his chest to stop him.

“You’re not going to find him,” she said. “He’s going to stay exactly where he is.”

“What do you want with him anyway?” Killian asked, trying to subtly shift her hand off him. The last time she’d touched his chest it had been to rip his heart out.

“Let’s call it insurance,” Cora said. Killian almost asked “insurance for what” but decided she either wouldn’t tell him, or if she did, it would be a lie, or something horrible that he would be better off not knowing. And it wasn’t as though he could tell anyone who could do anything about it. He was stuck.

OOooOOooOOooOO

The royal family wore black. The royalty from Arendelle came for the funeral, as did all the regional kings and queens from around the kingdom. Lost at sea meant there wasn’t a body to view, and the court sculptor only had outdated portraits to work with. David thought he’d captured the likeness well for the memorial. Someday, he and Snow would have to tell Leo about his elder sister and Henry about his mother. But at the present, he had to deal with Snow. He’d never seen her lose hope before, but there was no other explanation for what could’ve happened.

“I’ve seen her like this before,” Grumpy grumbled, watching as Snow, clad entirely in black, swept down the hall with Henry and Leo clinging to either hand. Even the young princes were dressed in black. It had been almost seven months since Emma died and technically, they ought to have been in half-mourning but no one in the palace had the heart for it.

“You have?” David asked, frowning at the captain of the guard.

Grumpy nodded. “When she thought you were going to marry Abigail,” he said. “She was so depressed she drank a potion to forget you.”

David watched as the two boys pulled on Snow’s hands. She crouched down to let Henry cup his hand around her ear and whisper something. She smiled, but her eyes were glistening like she was about to start crying. David recognised that it was the common expression she wore ever since the pink fairy, Nova, had come to tell them of Emma’s ship being lost at sea.

“C-captain?” a young guard asked, stepping forward with his helmet clutched in his hands. “Your majesty?”

“What is it?” Grumpy asked.

The guard eyed the queen and the young princes. Whatever it was he had to say clearly wasn’t fit for public consumption. David beckoned the guard and Grumpy into the great hall.

“What is it?” David asked. He thought he could remember the guard being named Samson or something similar. He didn’t want to make a mistake, however.

“I – there was an incident, about six months ago,” the guard said. He fidgeted like he was going to start wringing his helmet, and therefore slice his hands to ribbons.

“What kind of incident?” Grumpy asked.

The guard looked nervous. “A – there was a – a trio of people who came to the gates. They got snatched away by the Dark One but…”

“But what?” David asked, trying to be patient with the man.

“But…one of them said she was the – the princess,” the guard said. “But she was already supposed to be d-gone, and the Evil Queen’s kingdom had just woken up so I thought it must’ve been one of her tricks.”

“A woman claiming to be the princess showed up at the castle gates after Emma--” David started. He couldn’t make himself finish the sentence, but everyone knew what he meant.

The guard nodded, his head shaky. “But she was a sorceress. She stopped a dagger in mid-air!”

David and Grumpy stared at the young man and David came to the realisation he must’ve been hired after Emma left for Arendelle. He would have never met her before, or known she could do magic.

“The princess _was_ a sorceress, numbskull,” Grumpy growled.

The guard’s eyes widened in clear horror as he realised the enormity of his mistake.

“And you said the three people who came to the gates, they were taken by the Dark One?” David asked, trying very hard not to let the small spark in his chest turn to a full blown fire. But if there was even the slightest chance Emma was still alive, he had to investigate it.

The guard nodded.

“Thank you for bringing this to my attention, Sam-your name is Samson, isn’t it?” David asked.

“G-Gregory, sir,” the guard said. David nodded his apology.

“Thank you for bringing this to my attention, Gregory,” he said. “If you’ll excuse me.”

He made his way back to his chambers and found Snow already there in her black nightgown, brushing her hair. He opened his mouth to tell her about Gregory’s news, about the potential Emma was still alive, but the glistening in her eyes stopped him. If he was wrong, if he got her hopes up, if he let her think Emma was alive, and then found it wasn’t the case, she would be even more devastated than she already was.

“I think I was too hard on her,” Snow said without looking up from the mirror.

“No,” David said.

“I chased her out of the castle, David,” Snow said. “I was so disappointed in her for being pregnant, I was terrified that she could use magic, and I tried to force her to be something she wasn’t and--”

David stopped her by putting his arms around her and letting her rest her head against his chest. The Dark One had taken Emma, had he? But why?

“I have to go into the kingdom,” he heard himself say. “There’s an issue with the taxes in one of the mountain kingdoms, some lord won’t pay unless a royal comes to collect it, that sort of thing.”

“Do you want me to come with you?” Snow offered.

“I think the boys would be a handful if they didn’t have their mother to keep an eye on them, don’t you?” he replied.

_Henry_. That had to be why the Dark One had taken Emma. Because Henry was his grandson. But how on earth did he find out?

“No, of course,” Snow said, swallowing back tears. “Just be safe?”

“Always,” he promised, kissing the top of her head. He would be perfectly safe. But whether the Dark One would be was another question entirely.


End file.
